Department of Public Health and Infectious Diseases, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy.
Ann Ig. 2020 Sep-Oct;32(5):577-589. doi: 10.7416/ai.2020.2377.
Microplastics pollution represents a global public health concern. Since the greatest amount of microplastics are of anthropogenic origin, one of the most relevant strategies to reduce microplastics pollution is to raise awareness among the population and this is even more important for all those involved in public health prevention interventions. The aim of this study was to assess the level of knowledge and awareness on microplastics of a samples of future healthcare workers.
A cross-sectional study was performed on 151 university students in the field of Public Health, both pre- and post-graduate, attending the Sapienza University of Rome courses.
A questionnaire consisting of three sections was administered to the participants. The first section assessed knowledge and awareness on microplastics, the second consisted of an informative brochure on microplastics, the third evaluated the awareness after reading the brochure, and interventions considered useful to manage microplastics pollution.
About 25% of participants had never heard of microplastics. The scores on knowledge about microplastics were low, and differences between the investigated courses were not statistically significant (p-Value=0.134). Internet was the main source of information on microplastics, while the scores describing concern about the investigated issue resulted always higher after reading the informative brochure respect to before reading.
The lack of knowledge about microplastics pollution highlights that future public health workers should be better informed and, therefore, able to transfer essential information to the population. Increasing general population's knowledge and awareness would increase risk perception and make all individuals more active actors for reducing microplastics pollution.
微塑料污染是一个全球性的公共卫生问题。由于大部分微塑料是人为来源的，减少微塑料污染最相关的策略之一是提高公众的意识，这对于所有参与公共卫生预防干预的人来说尤为重要。本研究旨在评估未来医护人员样本对微塑料的知识和意识水平。
对罗马萨皮恩扎大学的公共卫生领域的 151 名本科生和研究生进行了横断面研究。
向参与者发放了一份由三个部分组成的问卷。第一部分评估了参与者对微塑料的知识和意识，第二部分是一份关于微塑料的信息手册，第三部分评估了参与者阅读手册后的意识，以及他们认为有用的管理微塑料污染的干预措施。
约 25%的参与者从未听说过微塑料。参与者对微塑料的知识得分较低，且不同课程之间的差异无统计学意义（p 值=0.134）。互联网是微塑料信息的主要来源，而描述对所调查问题的关注程度的得分在阅读信息手册后总是高于阅读前。
缺乏对微塑料污染的认识表明，未来的公共卫生工作者应该接受更好的教育，从而能够向公众传递重要信息。提高公众的知识和意识水平将增加风险感知，并使所有个体成为减少微塑料污染的更积极参与者。
