I want to say something like this:
“These products are found to be healthfully risky.”
“These products are found to be healthily risky.”
“These products are found to be risky health-wise.”
“These products are found to be medically risky.”
Unfortunately “healthfully” and “healthily” seem to only be used in positive contexts, relating to good health rather than just to health/degree or nature of health in general. As a result, used like this it sounds like an oxymoron/contradiction.
“Medically” sounds too formal and also sounds more specifically focused on the risk of complicating other medical issues than about overall heath.
“Health-wise” is ok but it makes it difficult to combine other aspects into the same sentence, for example: “These products were found to be environmentally, economically, and ‘healthfully’ risky”.
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I would suggest something like “These products were found to have health risks.”
These products (have been determined to) have environmental, economical, and health risks.
There isn’t really a word in common usage in English that means “with respect to the matter of ones health” that can be used in that construction,so you end up with passive voice statements.
There isn’t really a word in common usage in English that means “with respect to the matter of ones health”
Why are people so fixated on common usage? Modern linguistics have pointed out that as long as you use a word that fits your needs, nothing should be shut down as “incorrect” (I know you are not saying it is, I’m not coming at you).
In Spanish there’s salubridad and sanidad and before making this comment I thought there was no word for it in English and turns out salubriousness exists.
Anyway, it still doesn’t really fit that much. But useful nonetheless.
People are fixated on common usage because it’s common, and therefore, by definition, most likely to be unambiguously understood by the largest number of speakers.
The rest of this is in the spirit of modern linguistic nerdiness:
If there is a common word, it should be preferred over uncommon words simply for ease of communication. It is much more common in the English speaking world to say “a tour bus” for a bus that goes around a city near the sights to be seen, and while “a touristic bus” might be a perfectly acceptable synonym, it is less common.
The same holds for “salubrious”. While by dictionary standards it might be the best option, it isn’t that common, and most people would say “healthiness” or “wholesomeness” for salubridad and “sanitariness” or “healthfulness” for sanidad.
Source: USian immigrant to Spain married to a filología inglesa / translator
over uncommon words simply for ease of communication
This is pretty accurate, however we are not considering context, which is very important, it (context) defines what’s common and what’s not. AFAIK healthiness may not even be common in OPs case giving their hesitation to use it in the first place, I’d also argue that “salubrious” is less ambiguous. BUT, precedents are also relevant and “health benefits/risks” have a huge precedent in this case.
USian
Ah I see, a man of culture. I personally like Statetian more eve tho it also applies for my country the United States of Mexico.
filología
I think you meant filologa(?)
Another reason that English speakers talk about common usage is the ridiculous number of words in the language:
The RAE contains something like 93k words, including all the americanismos.
The Oxford English Dictionary contains roughly 470k words, and estimates that only 170k of those are in common current usage. So there are VASTLY more words in the English dictionary than most English speakers have ever even heard, much less could use properly. I didn’t know that the word touristic existed in English until I i moved to Spain, for instance.
So for English speakers, getting down to the 100k or so most used words means ignoring 80% of our dictionary. So when we say something isn’t common usage we really mean something between “no one has used that word in 60 years” and “I had to go look up if that even WAS an English word”.
This. The other options just sound like you aren’t a native English speaker (which is fine, but not something a native speaker would ever say).
English is only my second language, but if you don’t want to be too formal, can you reword it? For example:
“These products have a possible negative impact on well-being.”
But I like the other suggestions better as health is a more general word.
I’ve heard ☠️ is understandable across languages, but English is my first language so that influences my perception
“Medically”
“healthy” is inherently a positive word. It’s like trying to turn “happy” negative. You could change the form and put the risk on that noun: “…found to be a risk to ones health/happiness”
Unhealthy, unhappy. 🫠
Sure, then it’s the opposite, but it can’t be neutral like the OP wanted.
Your issue is that health is a solid noun which also covers several types of health which may need to be defined. So “risk to health” works like any other noun, “risk to trees”, “risk to water”, “risk to people”. Or physical harm/harm to physiology, psychological harm/harm to psychology, etc.
Because health is a science, it will be challenging to find less formal terms—without Latin/Greek morphemes—unlike well-being, health-wise, etc.
I would say, “These products are found to have health risks,” or, “These products may negatively affect your health.”
physiologically?
FYI: I find [email protected] very useful to ask about English language.
Unsalutory?
Something like this you want to hire a translator in the language you’re translating into. Level 4 at least, but level 5 for legal or medical stuff
I think “health risky” is acceptable. You can also hyphenate it, so it follows the pattern of terms like health-adverse, health-hazardous, etc.
in the states they just put “product has not been approved by the fda” or something like that.
tastes good though.
