Centro de Investigação e de Intervenção Social, Iscte - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal.
HEI-Lab, Escola de Psicologia e Ciências da Vida, Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal.
Risk Anal. 2022 Oct;42(10):2231-2242. doi: 10.1111/risa.13856. Epub 2021 Nov 17.
Recent wastewater analyses performed in care homes for the elderly showed high levels of water pollution resulting from pharmaceutical waste. The way people perceive the environmental risk of pharmaceuticals can contribute to reversing this problem, but the factors that influence risk perception remain relatively unknown. The aims of the study are two-fold. We first focused on exploring the levels of knowledge regarding environment/water pollution due to pharmaceutical residues from the groups responsible for prescribing (health professionals), handling (staff), and consuming pharmaceuticals (residents) in care homes for the elderly. Second, we assessed the environmental risk perception of pharmaceuticals based on two main factors: prescription medication (nonprescribed versus prescribed) and disease severity (milder versus severe disease), accounting for their level of knowledge (deficit versus sufficiency of knowledge). The study was designed based on correlational research. Data were collected in homes for the elderly located in three Southwestern European countries (N = 300), using self-report surveys. Current knowledge was perceived to be low and the need to know more was perceived to be high, across all groups. As hypothesized, results indicated that to assess the environmental risk, participants made use of information that was unrelated to pharmaceutical persistence, bioaccumulation, and toxicity (PBT). Prescribed pharmaceuticals and/or medication used to treat severe diseases were perceived as being more hazardous for the environment. Simple main effects analysis comparing between knowledge levels confirmed that this effect occurred mostly when participants had knowledge deficit for disease severity but not for prescription medication. These misconceptions might discourage taking an active role in reducing the impact of pharmaceutical residues in the environment.
最近在养老院进行的废水分析显示，由于药物废物，水污染程度很高。人们对药物环境风险的看法可能有助于扭转这一问题，但影响风险认知的因素仍知之甚少。本研究有两个目的。首先，我们专注于探索负责配药（卫生专业人员）、处理（工作人员）和服用药物（居民）的人群对药物残留引起的环境/水污染的认知水平。其次，我们根据两个主要因素评估了对药物的环境风险感知：处方药物（非处方与处方）和疾病严重程度（轻度与重度疾病），并考虑了他们的知识水平（知识不足与充足）。该研究基于相关性研究设计。使用自我报告调查，在三个西南欧国家（N=300）的养老院收集数据。结果表明，所有组都认为当前的知识水平较低，需要更多的知识。结果表明，参与者在评估环境风险时会使用与药物持久性、生物蓄积和毒性（PBT）无关的信息。参与者认为处方药物和/或用于治疗严重疾病的药物对环境更具危害性。比较知识水平的简单主要效应分析证实，当参与者对疾病严重程度的知识不足时，但不是对处方药物的知识不足时，就会出现这种影响。这些误解可能会阻碍人们在减少药物残留对环境影响方面发挥积极作用。
