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Doctors’ knowledge and perception of the health risks related to nearby municipal waste incineration: The Apostrophe survey Volume 8, issue 4, Juillet-Août 2009

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Authors
Signaux Forts 15, rue de Turbigo 75002 Paris, ABR Pharma 15, rue de Turbigo 75002 Paris

The French National Plan for Environmental Health 2004-2008 primarily aimed to develop public awareness of environmentally-related health issues. Thanks to their reputation of dependability, medical practitioners are partners of choice to achieve this goal. The Apostrophe survey was developed as a comparative study of the perception and knowledge of the health risk related to household waste burning by two different groups of medical practioners. The first group was established in the urban area of Clermont-Ferrand, a city where plans to build a new incinerator were met with strong opposition, and the second in Chambéry, where such a plant has been in use for a long time. In the first stage of the survey, 126 questionnaires (return rate: 10.6%) were analyzed. An overwhelming majority of practitioners (Clermont-Ferrand: 75%, Chambéry 92%) view their own level of information concerning health hazards due to waste incineration as below standard or practically nil. Nearly 90% are not familiar with the method used in France to assess health risks in the vicinity of incinerators. The notion of risk itself appears subjected to circumstances: in Clermont-Ferrand, 53% of all health professionals think that incinerating waste is a high-risk process, whereas in Chambéry, only 19% do so. In both areas, over 70% of all surveyed have expressed their interest for educational workshops in environmentally-related health issues. In the second stage of the survey, 577 medical practitioners from Clermont-Ferrand agreed to a telephone interview conducted by a colleague, to discuss the results of the first stage and to answer a new series of questions. These interviews confirmed the lack of information of practitioners and their need to learn more. The methods used to collect data in the two stages of the study were quite different, and this difference forbids any comparison of the results. We may nevertheless point out that the practitioners’ understanding and estimation of any health hazard related to incinerators has evolved in the course of the study. After debating the issue with a colleague, 30% of all practitioners still voiced their strong opposition to the building of a new incinerating plant, whereas 62% did so in the first stage.