Playing by the Rules: How Our Obsession with Safety is Putting Us All at Risk

Does an airline pilot really need to surrender his tweezers at airport security when he's about to board an aircraft equipped with an axe on the back of the cockpit door?
Can a mobile phone really cause a major explosion at a gas station?
And is there really a good reason why you should be be prevented from swimming in a lake more than a foot deep?

These rules exist, and they exist in the name of our own protection. But in this engrossing dissection of global health, safety and security regulations, authors Tracey Brown and Michael Hanlon dig a little deeper to discover the real reasons behind many of the instructions we obey without questioning their creators' motives. Their conclusions range from the startling to the staggering, and in presenting them the authors seek to empower readers to question the people and organisations who come up with them in the first place.

Previously published as In the Interests of Safety.

Michael Hanlonis a London-based science journalist and author who writes regularly for national newspapers as well asThe SpectatorandNew Scientist. Michael is the author of five popular science books, including:The Science of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,Ten Questions Science Can't Answer YetandEternity: Our Next Billion Years. Michael has participated in a gorilla rescue in Congo, become thoroughly lost in central Borneo and experienced a zero-gravity astronaut training flight over the Nevada desert. He finally saw the light about climate change after a swim in a melt-water lake a mile up on the Greenlandic icecap.

Tracey Brownis the Director of Sense About Science, a charity that campaigns for better evidence in public debate and policy making in the UK, and world-wide through international collaboration. She has led award-winning national campaigns to defend sound research and to stop misleading medical claims and, through Sense About Science, is currently challenging the routine concealment of clinical trial data by medical drug development companies. Tracey has contributed to books and journals on science, policy and the public, includingBetter Science Communicationand comments regularly in newspapers, magazines, events and broadcasts.