Saudis trust and confidence in information sources about chemical pollution

Abstract

The presence of toxic chemicals in the environment has drawn increasing concern in Saudi Arabia in recent years. Public health officials recognize a direct link between health problems and exposure to these chemicals. To communicate information on chemical pollution health risks effectively, policy makers must know population source of information and the confidence level in this information. This study investigated the Saudis ratings of different sources of information about health risks posed by chemicals pollution, confidence in these information sources, responsibility for public health risk protection and fulfillment. A written questionnaire designed and developed as a descriptive survey, which was distributed to a random sample of 850 individuals in Al-Baha region. The overall response rate was 68%. Data analyses were conducted using SPSS. Participants described receiving "a lot" of information from television and radio (38%) followed by the internet (35%), and friends and relatives (31%) with females rating these three sources higher than men. National and state environmental groups (2%), local community groups (3%) and private industry (4%) were the least rated sources. Respondents most frequently had "a lot" of confidence in medical doctors (39%) followed by television and radio (31%), and friends and relatives (15%). Responsibility for protecting the public from health risks was found to rest mainly on municipality health departments and province levels of government. It has been obvious that private industry and individual citizens had low responsibility for health risks. Greater than 70% of respondents felt that the fulfillment of responsibility was not adequate for all groups. This indicates that there is a defect in health risks communication and no substantial satisfaction with health risks management.

Key words: Information sources, health risk, confidence in source of information, responsibility for health protection.