Measuring Risk Perception in Pregnant Women in Heavily Polluted Areas: A New Methodological Approach from the NEHO Birth Cohort

Silvia Ruggieri, Sabina Maltese, Gaspare Drago, Simona Panunzi, Fabio Cibella, Fabrizio Bianchi, Fabrizio Minichilli and Liliana Cori
Additional contact information
Silvia Ruggieri: National Research Council of Italy, Institute for Biomedical Research and Innovation, 90146 Palermo, Italy
Sabina Maltese: National Research Council of Italy, Institute for Biomedical Research and Innovation, 90146 Palermo, Italy
Gaspare Drago: National Research Council of Italy, Institute for Biomedical Research and Innovation, 90146 Palermo, Italy
Simona Panunzi: National Research Council of Italy, Institute for System Analysis and Computer Science—BioMatLab, 00168 Rome, Italy
Fabio Cibella: National Research Council of Italy, Institute for Biomedical Research and Innovation, 90146 Palermo, Italy
Fabrizio Bianchi: National Research Council of Italy, Institute for Biomedical Research and Innovation, 90146 Palermo, Italy
Fabrizio Minichilli: National Research Council of Italy, Institute of Clinical Physiology, 56124 Pisa, Italy
Liliana Cori: National Research Council of Italy, Institute of Clinical Physiology, 56124 Pisa, Italy

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 20, 1-18

Abstract: Risk perception (RP) evaluation during pregnancy and its relationship with lifestyles are considered useful tools for understanding communities living in high-risk areas and preventing dangerous exposure. It is well known that exposure to pollutants and less-healthy lifestyles may result in increased disease occurrence during life. Our work investigated environmental RP through ad hoc questionnaires administered to 611 mothers within the NEHO birth cohort, recruited in three heavily contaminated areas of Southern Italy. Four different RP indices, an exploratory factorial analysis (EFA), and a latent class analysis were evaluated from questionnaires. The highest values of risk perception index were observed in the Milazzo site (0.64 ± 0.16) and the lowest in the Crotone site (0.5 ± 0.18). EFA revealed four latent factors, including different items describing environmental pollution, and subjects were classified into four latent classes with different RP indices. Significant RP profiles were different among the sites ( p < 0.001). Our results did not demonstrate any association between RP and lifestyles during pregnancy. Improving healthy lifestyle behaviours, particularly in polluted areas, would generate co-benefits by preventing further risk factors. As remediation interventions can take a long time, it needs to improve healthy lifestyles in residents until remediation is completed.

Keywords: risk perception; industrially contaminated sites; birth cohort; pregnancy; risk communication (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/20/10616/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/20/10616/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:20:p:10616-:d:653219

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().