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Asbestos awareness among the residents of St. Kitts and Nevis: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: High levels of public awareness regarding the hazards of asbestos, rights to health, and benefits of an asbestos-free country can increase advocacy and political commitment to a total ban on asbestos. We aimed to investigate asbestos awareness and associated sociodemographic characterist...

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Autores principales: Jeffers, Denrick, Liao, Yu-Chi, Takahashi, Ken, Lin, Ro-Ting
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9509556/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36153532
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12992-022-00874-w
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author Jeffers, Denrick
Liao, Yu-Chi
Takahashi, Ken
Lin, Ro-Ting
author_facet Jeffers, Denrick
Liao, Yu-Chi
Takahashi, Ken
Lin, Ro-Ting
author_sort Jeffers, Denrick
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: High levels of public awareness regarding the hazards of asbestos, rights to health, and benefits of an asbestos-free country can increase advocacy and political commitment to a total ban on asbestos. We aimed to investigate asbestos awareness and associated sociodemographic characteristics among the adult population of St. Kitts and Nevis. METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, 1009 participants completed an online questionnaire with questions about sociodemographic data and asbestos awareness. We applied multiple regression models to estimate associations between sociodemographic factors, levels of asbestos knowledge, and attitudes toward asbestos management. RESULTS: We found that 70% of residents of St. Kitts and Nevis considered asbestos exposure to be a general public concern and believed the government should prevent it. Of all participants, 54% were in favor of completely banning the use and importation of all asbestos products and materials; those with higher levels of asbestos knowledge were more likely to favor a total ban. Higher proportions and odds of favoring a total asbestos ban were also observed in participants aged ≥ 30 years, women, those with higher education, and those living in St. Kitts (vs. Nevis). CONCLUSIONS: These findings support implementing policies to regulate and outright ban the use of asbestos products and materials in St. Kitts and Nevis. This data can be used to develop tailored campaigns to improve asbestos knowledge among sociodemographic groups with lower asbestos awareness, such as in the wider Caribbean and other under-resourced countries. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12992-022-00874-w.
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spelling pubmed-95095562022-09-26 Asbestos awareness among the residents of St. Kitts and Nevis: a cross-sectional study Jeffers, Denrick Liao, Yu-Chi Takahashi, Ken Lin, Ro-Ting Global Health Research BACKGROUND: High levels of public awareness regarding the hazards of asbestos, rights to health, and benefits of an asbestos-free country can increase advocacy and political commitment to a total ban on asbestos. We aimed to investigate asbestos awareness and associated sociodemographic characteristics among the adult population of St. Kitts and Nevis. METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, 1009 participants completed an online questionnaire with questions about sociodemographic data and asbestos awareness. We applied multiple regression models to estimate associations between sociodemographic factors, levels of asbestos knowledge, and attitudes toward asbestos management. RESULTS: We found that 70% of residents of St. Kitts and Nevis considered asbestos exposure to be a general public concern and believed the government should prevent it. Of all participants, 54% were in favor of completely banning the use and importation of all asbestos products and materials; those with higher levels of asbestos knowledge were more likely to favor a total ban. Higher proportions and odds of favoring a total asbestos ban were also observed in participants aged ≥ 30 years, women, those with higher education, and those living in St. Kitts (vs. Nevis). CONCLUSIONS: These findings support implementing policies to regulate and outright ban the use of asbestos products and materials in St. Kitts and Nevis. This data can be used to develop tailored campaigns to improve asbestos knowledge among sociodemographic groups with lower asbestos awareness, such as in the wider Caribbean and other under-resourced countries. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12992-022-00874-w. BioMed Central 2022-09-24 /pmc/articles/PMC9509556/ /pubmed/36153532 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12992-022-00874-w Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Jeffers, Denrick
Liao, Yu-Chi
Takahashi, Ken
Lin, Ro-Ting
Asbestos awareness among the residents of St. Kitts and Nevis: a cross-sectional study
title Asbestos awareness among the residents of St. Kitts and Nevis: a cross-sectional study
title_full Asbestos awareness among the residents of St. Kitts and Nevis: a cross-sectional study
title_fullStr Asbestos awareness among the residents of St. Kitts and Nevis: a cross-sectional study
title_full_unstemmed Asbestos awareness among the residents of St. Kitts and Nevis: a cross-sectional study
title_short Asbestos awareness among the residents of St. Kitts and Nevis: a cross-sectional study
title_sort asbestos awareness among the residents of st. kitts and nevis: a cross-sectional study
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9509556/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36153532
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12992-022-00874-w
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