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”.
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
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”.
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(?)
