Attitudes toward environmental hazards: where do toxic wastes fit?

Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health
J BurgerM Gochfeld

Abstract

The public is continually faced with making decisions about the risks associated with environmental hazards, and, along with managers and government officials, must make informed decisions concerning possible regulation, mitigation, and restoration of degraded sites or other environmental threats. We explored the attitudes regarding several environmental hazards of six groups of people: undergraduate science majors, undergraduate nonscience majors, and graduate students in environmental health, in ecological risk assessment, and in nonscience disciplines, as well as nonstudents over 35 yr of age. We had predicted that there would be significant differences in attitudes between science and nonscience majors and as a function of age. Relative concerns could be divided into three discrete classes (in descending order of concern): (1) general ecological problems (cutting tropical forests, polluting groundwater, trash along the coasts, lead in drinking water, and acid rain), (2) radon and nuclear wastes, and finally (3) specific nuclear waste facilities, chromium, fertilizers and pesticides, and electromagnetic waves. For any hazard, attitudes were consistent across groups with regard to ranking the severity of the environmental pro...Continue Reading

References

Sep 1, 1989·Risk Analysis : an Official Publication of the Society for Risk Analysis·C F Keown
Apr 17, 1987·Science·P Slovic
Aug 1, 1993·Risk Analysis : an Official Publication of the Society for Risk Analysis·R P Barke, H C Jenkins-Smith

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Citations

Jul 15, 2003·Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health. Part a·Joanna BurgerMichael Gochfeld

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