Health and the environment: Risk perception survey in Cornwall.
Creators: name: Belle-Isle, Lynne M. C.
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 1996
Subjects: subject: Health Sciences, Public Health.

description: One objective of the 'Ecosystem Recovery on the St. Lawrence" project is to assess the community's perception of the impact of contamination of the St Lawrence River on their quality of life. More precisely, the Health Sciences component of the project has been assigned the task of evaluating the public's perception of health risks associated with contamination of the St. Lawrence River. The survey presented in this paper was designed to evaluate the perception of residents of Cornwall regarding various environmental health risks associated with the Cornwall area and the St. Lawrence River; compare their perception of certain environmental health risks to the perception of the general Canadian population found in the Health-Risk Perception in Canada report; identify their main sources of information on environmental health risks and compare them to those of the Canadian population; evaluate the level of confidence in various sources of information regarding environmental health risks and compare it to the Canadian population: obtaining a general idea of their attitudes and opinions concerning a variety of environmental health risk perception issues; gather data on behaviours related to health risks, and collect personal and demographic data. To obtain this information, a random sample telephone survey was conducted on 497 adults living in Cornwall. The results reveal that the respondents are significantly more concerned about health risks to themselves and their family from river water, air pollution, chemical pollution, PCB or dioxin, and tap water, than to the Canadian public in general. A significantly lower percentage of the respondents perceive chemical pollution, PCB or dioxin, pesticides in food and bottled water to be a high health risk to the Canadian public than in the "Health-Risk Perception in Canada" survey concluded across Canada. The most important source of information regarding health issues and risk is the media, but the greatest confidence is to medical doctors. In general, the respondents feel that Cornwall is an unhealthy place to live, are concerned about the health risks from chemicals, but feel they have very little control over the risks to their health. The majority of respondents do not eat sportfish from the St. Lawrence River mainly because of concern about water pollution. The respondents that do eat sportfish mostly consume yellow perch. In addition, about three-quarters of respondents do not swim in the St. Lawrence River for various reasons. The most common reported medical conditions are asthma, arthritis, allergies, heart conditions, diabetes and hypertension. Multivariate analyses reveal that the less educated, older sportfish consumers who have been living in Cornwall for several years are less likely to associate environmental pollution with health problems. This survey identifies the major concerns of the residents of Cornwall and is useful to direct risk communication. Recommendations are made based on the results of this survey.