Regulators deleted the word hazard to keep the public complacent

Evidence

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sanitized its lexicon to neutralize public perception of environmental hazards (Rogers & Kincaid, 1981). In this linguistic cleansing operation, a senior official at the agency banished the word hazard because it is “a trigger word that excites the American public needlessly” (Stiff, 1982). The justification for keeping people uninformed about carcinogens and other toxic chemicals in their environment was to spare them unnecessary uneasiness. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2683

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The EPA case shows paternalistic ‘sparing people uneasiness’ as the exact moral vocabulary that enables institutional concealment of risk.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2683