Media Hoaxes Create Public Panic

I don't know if anyone else has noticed.. but it seems everything out there has a possible chance of killing me. Going to school I could get shot by a psycho kid, playing with children's toys could give me lead poisoning, allowing my kids to watch certain tv shows may turn them into serial killers, or go looking for spongebob in the ocean and end up drowning, eating certain food could make me fat and die an early death, trusting anyone with a strange face could end me up in the back of their truck with duct tape over my mouth, and reusing water bottles most certainly will lead to my untimely demise. While most of these things are probably true, the media sure seems to do a great job of scaring the crud out of everyone, and making them watch their step about every little thing. Sure some of these things are helpful, you do want to watch you diet, and you most definatly want to make sure little Jimmy isn't watching something ultraviolent, or sucking on lead posioned toys. But, sometimes, the media's friendly warnings seem to be a little silly, and send many people into wild, unnessicary frenzys. The most recent example of this is the whole "reuse of water bottles being hazordous to your health" nonsense. According to www.snoops.com the media picked this up off of a college kids thesis paper, and passed it around the news. The college kid did do tests and everything, but the way he went about doing the tests, is proven to cause plastic residue. The actual companies that make the bottles performed tests in the proper manner, and confirmed through the health department, that plastic bottles are in fact quite safe to reuse multiple times, and wont cause you "death by plastic." The media seems to like to take things like that and just go with it.. causing mass panic, lots of good news, and more buying of new bottles, thus boosting the economy. Is it just me, or does this seem silly?