Carcinogens, toxins, radiation and the like

I find it entertainingly hilarious how sensitive some of my coworkers are to these things.  At the moment, our firm is currently undergoing a remodeling of sorts, and they are tearing down my boss' office and expanding it to form a meeting room of some sort.  Granted, we're still in the building, so we hear and smell everything that goes on.  As they use turpentine and stuff, one particular coworker was so freaked out about making sure that the door was closed, lest we get cancer from the fumes that wafted over.  I always smirk to myself.  This is coming from a man who chain smokes every day.  If he was so "concerned" about his "health," then he'd quit smoking.

The same thing goes with microwaves. I always stand close to the microwave and monitor the progress of my food's warming (I guess that's who you could phrase that), and they always freak out that I am standing so close.  They say "Be careful of the radiation!  Stand back!"  Honestly, I'm doused with a good bout of radiation each day.  Our computers have radiation, cell phones more than we would like to believe, television, and yes, microwaves too all give a steady flow of radiation, and I don't see them concerned about that.  It's just funny to me how they're so concerned about these minute aspects, and don't make any changes about their environment or the polluted air that affects them each and every day.  I guess they're afraid of death.  I've just accepted it.  If I am meant to die by radiation poisoning, I will die that way.  There is no stopping it.

Another thing that is entertaining is just their mentality.  The movie 2012 was a huge hit in Chinese theaters, and nearly everyone has seen it.  However, contrary to what you might think, the feeling it evoked was that of apathy.  There's nothing we can do about it (the whole world ending bit), so we should just live our lives the best we can.  Some though have considered investing in planes as an escape route as the movie had said, but this reveals a lot about the Chinese mind set.  They do not think about a solution to the problem.  No, they just think of a way out, an escape plan after everything has collapsed in itself.  They don't want to fix the problem, because it is too problematic.  Everyone simply continues to act how they act, do whatever they want, abuse the system, because no one will stop them.  They will use it until it's so overused that it collapses in on itself, giving out from the pressure.  No one wants to be the odd one out, and it is a huge problem in my honest opinion.  I can understand wanting unity, but being a mindless unit does no one any good.