Societal perception of chemical risk

1. Societal perception of
chemical risk
Prof. Luca Pietrantoni
Università di Bologna
luca.pietrantoni@unibo.it

2. Professionals promoting and
regulating health and safety
need to understand the ways in
which people think about and
respond to risk

3. Some Questions Addressed
•How do people think about ”chemical risk”?
•Are there differences between lay people and
experts?
•What factors determine the perception of risk and
the acceptance of risk?
•How is risk communicated in the public shere?
•What are the “best practices” in risk
communication?

4. Risk definition
• Combination of the probability of an event and the
consequences of the event
(ISO 17776 Standard, 2000)
• The combination of the expected frequency (events/year)
and severity (effects/events) of a single incident or a group
of incidents
(Center for chemical process safety, 2008)
Risk = Probability x Consequencies
(or Frequency x Severity)

5. Risk representations
Risk Matrices

8. Risk perception
•Risk is always the risk of something (technical
facility, natural hazard) to someone (an individual, a
group of people, society or all humankind).
•Risk is perceived notsolely by technical parameters
and probabilistic numbers, but in our psychological,
social and cultural context.
•Individual and social characteristics form our risk
perception and influence the way we react towards
risks

9. Introduction: exercise
• Put these risk activities in order from the highest to the lowest
(“in terms of risk of dying as a consequence of this activity or
technology”):
• Nuclear power
• Smoking
• Pesticides
• Mountain climbing
• Food preservaties
• Motor vehicles
• X-rays
• Alcohol
• Vaccinations
• Police work

10. Introduction: solution
• Order of the risk activities according to experts judgment
(Slovic, Fischhoff, Lichtenstein, 1980):
1.Motor vehicles
2.Smoking
3.Alcohol
4.X-rays
5.Pesticides
6.Food preservatives
7.Police work
8.Nuclear power
9.Vaccinations
10.Mountain climbing

11. Slovic, P., Fischhoff, B., & Lichtenstein, S. (1980). Facts and fears: Understanding
perceived risk. In Societal risk assessment (pp. 181-216). Springer US.

16. The Psychometric Paradigm
•Our risk perception is attenuated or amplified in a
typical pattern described by the psychometric
paradigma (Slovic 1987)
•Every hazard is uniquely understood and evaluated
in terms of its characteristic qualities.
•Experts typically define risk strictly in terms of
annual mortalities. Lay people almost always
include other factors in their definition of risk.
•Slovic identified main qualitative risk perception
modulators.

18. Methods of the Psychometric Paradigm
• The Psychometric Paradigm (Slovic, 1987) employs questionnaires to
measure the public's attitudes towards the risks and benefits from
various activities.
• statistical analyses for quantitative representations of risk attitudes
and perceptions

20. Correlations between risk perception ratings (of genetic
engineering) and the psychometric factors for the public
and experts.
Personal risk General risk
Public Experts Public Experts
Dread 0.40 0.43 0.19 0.01
New Risk 0.44 0.51 0.31 -0.06
Interfering with
Nature
0.47 0.53 0.47 0.08
Immoral risk 0.51 0.56 0.61 0.38
Severity of
consequences
0.50 0.54 0.47 0.08
How risk perception differ from public and
experts?

21. Factor analsyis of the 18 characteristics
•Many of the risk characteristics are
highly correlated between them (e.g.
«voluntary» and «controllable»)
•A factor analysis reduced 18
characteristics
•Reduction in two factors

23. Exercise
• Put these risks in the graph according to your perception:
• Vaccines
• Nuclear Reactor Accidents
• Alcohol
• Pesticides
• Car accidents
• Fireworks
• DNA techonolgy
• Caffeine
• Large Dams
Factor 2
Unknown risk
Factor 1
Dread risk

25. Psychological aspects attenuating or
amplifying the perception of risk.

26. Acceptance of risk
tends to be reduced if…
•the risk is new or unfamiliar
•exposure is involuntary
•the risk is not under personal control
•the risk evokes feelings of dread
•the outcomes are catastrophic
•the benefits of an activity are not highly visible
•the benefits are not fairly distributed among those who
bear the risks
•the risk is posed by human failure as opposed to
natural causes

27. Methods to study risk
perception

28. Methods used to investigate societal perceptions
and attitudes about chemical risk
•Interviews
•Focus group
•Questionnaire
•Cognitive mapping/free associations

29. Exercise
• Make a list of personal protection
equipment (PPE) used in chemical
industry in your country
• What is % of use and not use among
workers?
• What are the reasons for not using PPE?

31. Assumptions of the study
•Understanding how workers perceive
risks have important implications, not
only for their health and safety, but also
for the development of strategies for
health protection and safety at the
workplace.
•Lack of use of PPE from management is
interpreted this as a lack of discipline
and to rely on sanction

32. What is a focus group?
•Focused Group discussion
•Focus groups can be used to understand
people’s perceptions and attitudes, and
particularly how people can hold
multiple viewpoints and change
theirthinking in the process of
interaction with others about the topic
of interest

34. Questions in the focus group/1
Interpretation of hazard and risks related to chemical
substances
•How would you define “a chemical substance?”
•What is your personal interpretation of “a hazard?”
•Which aspects of hazard-related health risks do you consider
important?
•What do you consider as warning signals following exposure
to a hazardous substance?
•What is your personal interpretation of “risk?”

35. Questions in the focus group/2
Personal Protective behaviors
•What do you do to protect yourself against chemical risks?
•personal and collective protection measures
•information (type, to whom)
Organizational culture
•What do you believe the company does to protect you against chemical
risks?
•personal and collective protection measures
•information and training
•presentation of health and safety culture

36. Results/identification of hazard
Workers in this focus group study assess a hazard using both
sensory (e.g., product smell, skin irritation)and empirical
experiences (e.g., one’s ownexperience or that of colleagues).
The following statements reflect the workers’ experiences:
by smelling or feeling, sometimes also after a few less severe
accidents, you will know that a product is riskful . . .
and when workers suffer a serious irritation to a product
several times, you will know to take care! You learn a
lot from trial and error

37. Results/ resignation
Living with a permanent awareness of a hazard is not
tolerable. Acceptance with time
you simply don’t think about it. We work with chemical
products all day long. If you constantly worry about the risk of
getting sick, you won’t enjoy your job any longer . . . although
toxic compounds are labelled, over time you don’t pay
attention anymore. (Focus group 6)
You can’t refuse to work either. You just have to try to make
the best of it and get the job done. (Focus group 4)

38. Results/ attitudes toward PPE
Some workers are ready to run actual health
risks to avoid the discomfort (e.g., hot, heavy,
awkward, poor fitting) of PPE. Such an attitude
potentially results in risky behavior (e.g., refusal
to wear PPE). Workers stated, for instance:
I’ve had splashes of paint drops in my eyes countless
times! Usually while I was scraping the walls of the vat
without a face mask. But do you honestly think that
I’m going to wear that heavy mask every time I have to
scrape out the vat? (Focus group 1)

39. the protective gloves are too warm and
clumsy to work with . . . the safety glasses
are painful to wear and steamed up from
heat . . . (Focus group 7)
Working without a mask happens quite
often, even with hazardous products
because they are clumsy to wear at a
temperature of 38◦C.

41. The survey measures
• Perceived consumer products that contain chemicals posing a
risk to the user.
• For household cleaning products and hair dyes: perceived risk,
potential negative health effects and usage behaviour.
• For sunscreen: perceived risk, meaning of “dermatologically
tested” sunscreen, usage behaviour.
• For clothing fabrics: perceived risk, perceived health risk of
various clothing types, importance placed on risk when buying
clothing.
• Information about and protection against harmful chemicals.

42. Participants
•The interviews were conducted among
26,718 citizens in the 27 Member States
of the European Union.
•Different socio-demographic variables -
such as respondents’ gender, age,
education and occupation

43. The questions
1. According to what you know, which of the following
consumer products contain chemicals posing a risk to the
user? List of products (MULTIPLE ANSWERS POSSIBLE)
2. To what extent you agree or disagree with the following
statement: With regard to health, the main issue is not to
what extent you are exposed to a dangerous chemical
substance, but whether or not you are exposed to it at all
3. To what extent you agree or disagree with the following
statement: If a person is exposed to an extremely small
amount of a chemical that is harmful at larger amounts, then
that person will probably be seriously ill some day in the
future even if the amount is extremely small

47. Societal perception of
chemical risk
Prof. Luca Pietrantoni
Università di Bologna
luca.pietrantoni@unibo.it