—Investigative Report on Public Awareness of Uranium Pollution, Biological Materials and Synthetic Biology
Uranium, a radioactive heavy metal element, poses a threat to both the environment and human health. A person can be exposed to uranium by inhaling dust in the air or by ingesting contaminated water and food, and such exposure can sharply increase the risk of various diseases including cancer. Uranium pollution has become more commonplace due to nuclear accidents, uranium mining, the deployment of depleted uranium weapons and so on. However, the existing methods for remediation are still less than satisfactory. This is why we are trying to construct a novel functional biological hydrogel for uranium removal using the methods of synthetic biology. In addition to the necessary design and experiments, we wanted to know whether the populace in China has a correct understanding of uranium pollution, as well as investigate their awareness and acceptance of biological hydrogel and synthetic biology, in order to round up this project completely. Thus we designed a questionnaire and analyzed the findings as presented in this report.
Objective
To investigate the current status of awareness about uranium pollution, biological materials and synthetic biology among Chinese people so as to provide scientific data to guide future science popularization and education efforts.
Subjects
939 Chinese respondents filled in an online questionnaire from August 24th to September 2nd 2016
Methods
939 Chinese respondents were investigated by random sampling in an online survey from August 24th to September 2nd 2016 (10 days in total). The anonymous questionnaire was of our own design. The data were collected and analyzed using SOJUMP online.
Gender and age structure
A total of 939 filled questionnaires were collected in this investigation. Most of the population was among the 15-30 and 30-50 years old age groups, respectively accounting for 58.9% and 30.8% of the total. The respondents were 50.4% male and 49.6% female. The age and gender composition of the sample was thus somewhat different from the national population. This is perhaps expected for online surveys, which generally tend to skew towards younger and better-educated respondents.
Regional distribution
Among the 939 respondents, 799 were from urban areas, accounting for 85%, and 140 were from rural areas, accounting for 14.9% of the total.
Education level
In the survey population, the educational background of the majority was undergraduate degree or above, accounting for 76.8% of all respondents.
Most of the 939 respondents (79.5%) were well aware of the dangers uranium pollution can pose to human health. However, the detailed awareness of the types of harms and the mechanisms involved was much less developed, with only 36.4% answering the related questions correctly. More than half of the respondents were aware that it depends on the concentration whether and how much uranium will be harmful to health, but few of them knew exactly the upper acceptable concentration of uranium in water, at only 18.7%. On the other hand, the awareness about the sources of uranium pollution was as high as 73.6%. Nevertheless, as for the knowledge about the distribution of uranium in specific materials and feasible solutions for uranium pollution, the results were barely satisfactory, with awareness rates of just 8% and 23.1%, respectively. Almost no one was aware that uranium also exists in bananas, which indicates that the populace may lack in awareness and actions regarding prevention of exposure. Judging by the data, the majority of Chinese people only have a qualitative knowledge about uranium but lack systematic or quantitative insights. Their awareness of remediation approaches can also be improved.
