Health scare

A health scare can be broadly defined as a social phenomenon whereby the public at large comes to fear some threat to health, based on suppositions which are nearly always not well-founded.
In 2009 an ABC News article listed "The Top 10 Health Scares Of The Decade": "Some of these threats turned out to be almost nonexistent. Others were arguably overblown. Some caused widespread harm." They listed the following scares: