Would race condition like this be harmful?

Hi all

I have a piece of code like this:

volatile long i = 4000000;

//thread 1:
while(i != 0)
{
}


//thread 2:
while(i != 0)
{
    InterlockedDecrement(&i);
}

the Intel Thread Checker re****ts there are race conditions here, but I
think 
they are innocuous.
Though I can eliminate these race conditions by using 
InterlockedCompareExchange(&i,0,0) != 0,
I want to know if it is necessary to eliminate these race conditions?
Thanks!