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I agree that Peter Sandman's work is well worth looking at and thinking about.
When I was science/medicine editor at Rutgers U Press, I had the 
pleasure of publishing:

The Reporter's Environmental Handbook (Paperback)
   by Bernadette West (Editor),  Peter M. Sandman (Editor), Michael R. 
Greenberg (Editor),
    Rutgers University Press (1995; 3rd edition 2003)

It provides "briefings" on many environmental/ public health issues 
that scare people:
   asbestos
  benzene
   birth defects
   cancer cluster claims....
   Also a good section on how to find experts and trustworthy sources

It was intended for reporters with little or no science/medical 
background who found themselves in a situation where they had to get 
background information quickly. It would be useful for science center 
staff, too. Of course, the technical data always needs checking for 
updates, but invaluable as a starting point and a model  of how to 
convey essential information effectively.

Karen Reeds

>
>Peter Sandman has dome some interesting work on risk, I've heard him
>talk a couple times and he makes some interesting arguments that can
>impact how we communicate risk to general public audiences.
>
>Here's a quote from his website that gives a taste of his work:
>
>"In the mid-1980s I coined the formula "Risk = Hazard + Outrage" to
>reflect a growing body of research indicating that people assess risks
>according to metrics other than their technical seriousness: that
>factors such as trust, control, voluntariness, dread, and familiarity
>(now widely called "the outrage factors") are as important as
>mortality or morbidity in what we mean by risk."
>
><psandman.com>
>
>  - Len
>
>
>
>--
>
>Len Adams
>Health Promotion Specialist
>Tacoma-Pierce County Health Dept.
>3629 South D Street, MS:315
>Tacoma, WA 98418-6813
>
>253 798-6129
> 
>********************************************************************* > 
>The Science of Fear, by Daniel Gardner, is a book that every science
>  > educator should read.
>>
>  > http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780525950622-0

-- 
Karen Reeds, PhD, FLS
Guest Curator, Come into a New World: Linnaeus & America
American Swedish Historical Museum, Philadelphia,  February 15-July 1, 2007
Now showing at New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ , May-December, 2008
http://www.americanswedish.org/, http://www.americanswedish.org/linnaeus.htm
http://www.newjerseystatemuseum.org/
Exhibition guide available from 
http://www.dianepublishing.net/category_s/490.htm (p.4)
Princeton Packet story 8/22/2008: SPOTLIGHT: Making sense of nature: 
State Museum exhibit salutes 300th of the grand master of biology...
By Joan Goldstein. Staff photos by Mark Czajkowski 
http://www.packetonline.com/articles/2008/08/22/the_princeton_packet/lifestyle/doc48aedc746014e051658970.txt

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