"for" or "of"

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>Could you please tell me which would be preferred and why?
>
>³How do I reduce my risk for heart attack or stroke?²
>
>³How do I reduce my risk of heart attack or stroke?²
>
>
>³...reduce your risk for a heart attack or stroke.²
>
>³...reduce your risk of a heart attack or stroke.²

I prefer "risk of" in these. Why? Just because that's the usual
construction AFAIK. Use of "risk for" in this grammatical context is not
rare, but it's a lot rarer if you get away from the medical area. For
example Google gives about 100 hits for "a risk of bankruptcy" but only 1
(with a Bulgarian topic!) for "a risk for bankruptcy". IMHO, there is no
reason why "a risk of stroke" should be grammatically different from "a
risk of bankruptcy". Other sources (on-line British National Corpus,
on-line news archive) seem to agree, at a brief glance.

-- Doug Wilson