Environmental Health Risk Perception Among Saudi Population

A survey was conducted on Saudi residents of Al-BahaProvince. It was conducted to understand how Saudiresidents of Al-Baha region perceive environmentalchemical pollution health risks. The survey demonstrated higher perceptions of riskamong females as compared to males and are morelikely to rank items as a high risk than males do.The older age group is more likely to considersomething as being a high health risk, andrespondents with higher education were more likely torate more health risks as "high risk" than otherrespondents were. The media (TV and radio)represented the primary source of information onhealth risks. The confidence shown by respondents inthe information on health issues or health risks thatthey received from the above sources did notcorrespond much with the amount of information received.Responsibility for protecting the public from healthrisks was found to rest mainly on municipality healthdepartments and state levels of government. Thesurvey showed that there is no substantialsatisfaction with the way health risks are being managed.The attitudes of respondents to statements aboutchemicals were negative, reflecting the wordassociations.