With a grain of salt

It is easy to visualize 300 people; you have seen this many people at a party and want to save them.

 The proposed law may save 300 people from fire by exposing 300 million people to various toxic chemicals in mattresses.

 It is harder to visualize 300 million people.

 If we compare people to grains of table salt,

84 pounds of salt is 300 million grains.

There are 1.2 million grains of table salt in one cup

One teaspoon of salt contains 25,000 grains.

300 grains is about 1/100 of a teaspoon. Less than what you would get with a single shake of a saltshaker.

 While every life is important, is it wise to expose 300 million people to even negligible risk to save a very few?

 Even our best science, which has not been applied to this issue, has been proven wrong in the past.

If we guess wrong we will kill millions of people.