 Imagine this. You're having a quiet evening together with friends. You have in your hand a 12 year old single malt whiskey. And a stranger comes along and spits in it. What's the first thought that goes through your head? A. What the heck, it's probably safe, I'll just drink it anyway. Or B. I better do a quick risk assessment just in case. Or C. You dirty bastard. Even though the chances are that the alcohol in the whiskey would kill off anything dangerous in the spit, my guess is you'd go for option C. The primary problem here is not whether you drink is safe or dangerous after being gobbled in. It's the violation of something that's important to you. This is an extreme example but when unwanted chemicals get into people's food, water or air, they tend to get upset about having to swallow someone else's waste, irrespective of whether it's safe or not. And even though the resulting conversation may be about safety and risk, it's often really about an imposed or a perceived loss of value. Of course, life is often more complex than a stranger spitting into your whiskey. The clothes we wear, the products we use, the food we eat all lead to waste being produced that lands in somebody's backyard. And even when that waste has been rendered acceptably safe, who's to decide whose metaphorical spit lands on whom and whether that's okay. And just to make things more complicated, what if the stuff we think of as being nasty actually makes the things we use work better and safer? Admittedly, the spit metaphor runs out of steam a bit at this point, but there are plenty of seemingly unpleasant chemicals that go into the things we use to ensure they do what they're supposed to without causing harm. So what do you do when you find out what someone's put in your hot dog or dumped in your back door? Call them a bastard or ask why? Whichever, conversations about risk are more often than not about choice and justice and someone else seemingly reducing the worth of something that's of value to you. Which is why talking about risk isn't just about the evidence, even when the evidence says the risk is negligible.