Risk communication discourse among ecological risk assessment professionals and its implications for communication with nonexperts

Evaluating the perceptions of pesticide use, safety, and regulation and identifying common pesticide-related topics on Twitter

Synthetic pesticides are important agricultural tools that increase crop yield and help feed the world's growing population. These products are also highly regulated to balance benefits and potential environmental and human risks. Public perception of pesticide use, safety, and regulation is an important topic necessitating discussion across a variety of stakeholders from lay consumers to regulatory agencies since attitudes toward this subject could differ markedly. Individuals and organizations can perceive the same message(s) about pesticides differently due to prior differences in technical knowledge, perceptions, attitudes, and individual or group circumstances. Social media platforms, like Twitter, include both individuals and organizations and function as a townhall where each group promotes their topics of interest, shares their perspectives, and engages in both well-informed and misinformed discussions. We analyzed public Twitter posts about pesticides by user group, time, and location to understand their communication behaviors, including their sentiments and discussion topics, using machine learning-based text analysis methods. We extracted tweets related to pesticides between 2013 and 2021 based on relevant keywords developed through a "snowball" sampling process. Each tweet was grouped into individual versus organizational groups, then further categorized into media, government, industry, academia, and three types of nongovernmental organizations. We compared topic distributions within and between those groups using topic modeling and then applied sentiment analysis to understand the public's attitudes toward pesticide safety and regulation. Individual accounts expressed concerns about health and environmental risks, while industry and government accounts focused on agricultural usage and regulations. Public perceptions are heavily skewed toward negative sentiments, although this varies geographically. Our findings can help managers and decision-makers understand public sentiments, priorities, and perceptions and provide insights into public discourse on pesticides. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2023;19:1581-1599. © 2023 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC).

Worldwide associations between air quality and health end-points: are they meaningful?

OBJECTIVES

The World Health Organization (WHO) provides data on national indices of health, environment and economy. When we were asked, why air pollution is negatively correlated with cancer mortality, our first response (presumably the mortality data are not age-adjusted) was not sufficient to explain the paradox.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

A table including all-cause, cancer and childhood mortality, life expectancy, gross national product per person, smoking prevalence, physician density and particulate matter (PM10) per country (N = 193) was developed. For explorative purposes weighted cross-sectional multiple linear regressions models were built.

RESULTS

Air pollution is positively correlated with infant and overall mortality and negatively with life expectancy. This might not only depict a true causal effect of PM10 because air quality is also an indicator of a country's prosperity and general state of environment. Cancer mortality is negatively correlated with PM10. However, this association turns positive when economic or health system indicators are controlled.

CONCLUSIONS

The World Health Organization's world-wide data sets demonstrate the large disparity of our world. A careful and professional approach is needed as interpretation is difficult, especially for lay persons. Therefore, with publicly available data WHO should also provide interpretation and guidance.