Put every risk on one ruler
The main unit is expected minutes of life lost per day. A “microlife” means 30 minutes. A “micromort” means a one-in-a-million chance of death, worth about 25 expected life-minutes for a middle-aged adult.
Public health · risk literacy · draft instrument
Your fear is mispriced. Here's the receipt.
Compare everyday risks and product premiums using the same clear, honest units.
Measured result
Quit “Sugar-sweetened beverages — 2 cans/day” first — you'd recover about 29.5 more minutes of life per day than quitting “Drinking from plastic water bottles — daily”.
Life-minutes rulerexpected min lost / day
0.11101001000
ASugar-sweetened beverages — 2 cans/day30
BDrinking from plastic water bottles — daily0.5
lower expected costlog scalehigher expected cost
Robust: Bands don’t overlap — this ordering is robust.
Trust this comparison to the weaker of the two evidence grades: D.
Full-ladder context: A ranks #22 and B ranks #91 among 131 comparable daily exposures.
152 hazard entries131 comparable110 product pairsv0.2 workbook
Compare
Put any two daily risks on the same ruler.
Open the comparator →02Hazards
See what deserves more attention—and what deserves less fear.
152 entries · 21 anchors →03Premium
Check when paying more buys better—and when it does not.
110 product pairs →READ / 01
How to read the instrument
30 min
One microlife: a half-hour of expected life.
Band + tick
The band is uncertainty; the tick is the central estimate.
Grade A–D
A is strongest. Every verdict inherits its weaker grade.
UnderhypedOverhypedCalibrated
HOW IT WORKS
How the numbers work
TrueDelta37 turns very different risks into the same unit so they can be compared. The estimate, uncertainty, and evidence strength stay visible so one number never pretends to be the whole truth.
Daily harm and sudden risk feel different
Smoking or poor sleep can create a small cost again and again. Driving drunk or skydiving creates a smaller chance of a very bad event. The average loss can match even when the experience does not.
Grades show how much we know
Grade A is the strongest evidence, such as clear cause-and-effect or reliable real-world records. B is strong but less certain. C has important unanswered questions. D is early or highly uncertain.
Hype flags compare fear with evidence
“Overhyped” means people often fear the risk more than the evidence supports. “Underhyped” means the evidence is stronger than the attention it gets. “Calibrated” means they are roughly in balance.
The dose always matters
Two sodas a day is not the same as one soda a week. The stated dose travels with every score. One-time poisonings and other special rows are kept as reference points, not forced into the daily comparator.
The estimates start with serious sources
Sources include major medical studies and public datasets from the CDC, EPA, WHO, NHTSA/FARS, IARC, GBD, poison centers, and published work on microlives and micromorts. Every value is still a draft estimate, not a personal medical prediction.
Draft v0.2: 152 hazard entries and 110 product pairs. Values are provisional calibration estimates pending editorial, source-level, and governance review.
ABOUT & TRUST
Funded by readers. Accountable to the ruler.
We take no money from any product we score. Ever.
Donation-funded
No ads, affiliate links, store links, or paid rankings.
Brands are examples, not targets
Scores attach to ingredients, formulations, or processing—not to a company name.
Corrections are welcome
Source corrections and challenges help improve the draft before publication.
Feedback link placeholder ↗