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ng author. Current address: Division for Applied Biochemistry a

hemical Engineering, Vienna University of Technology, Ge

Austria. Fax: +43-1581-6266.

ss: druzhini@mail.zserv.tuwien.ac.at (I. Druzhinina).

ee front matter # 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

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Radioactive contamination of wildmushrooms: a cross-cultural risk perception

study

I. Druzhinina a,�, J.M. Palma-Oliveira b

a Institute of Risk Research, University of Vienna, Turkenschanzstrasse 17/8, A-1180 Vienna, Austriab Faculty of Psychology, University of Lisbon, Alameda da Universidade, 1600 Lisbon, Portugal

Abstract

The aim of the present work was to determine the public perception of radioactive con-tamination of wild mushrooms, to confront this perception with an expert opinion, and todetermine those factors that are perceived differently by specialists and lay people.

The Internet appeared to be a useful tool in attaining these goals by finding the appropri-ate people across the world. The statistically significant differences in the perception of vari-ous aspects of mushroom pollution were revealed between respondents from three worldregions, which were differently affected by the Chernobyl accident. Moreover, the majorityof people have demonstrated a considerable difference in the perception of the globalcontamination of the environment versus the pollution of their local counties. The socio-psychological explanations of data are given.

In general, there is a steady consistency in the perception of factors, which may controlthe radioactive contamination of edible fungi, by the majority of respondents. However,experts (radioecologists) rank the factor of fungal species as an extremely important para-meter, while other people perceive the factors of the distance from the source of the pol-lution and the time thereafter as the most important parameters. Such discrepancies betweenprofessional and unprofessional opinions are discussed and some recommendations for riskcommunications are presented.# 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Keywords: Risk perception; Mushrooms; Radionuclide; Public perception

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1. Introduction

The collection of wild mushrooms is often seen as one of the few opportunities

that people have to satisfy their often-hypothesized drive as hunters and gatherers;

thus it can be viewed as an important part of our cultural heritage. Deprivation of

this recreational, cultural and sometimes economic activity due to the dread of

contamination is considered to be a significant loss of the quality of life.Recent investigations of polluted environments, however, including the broad

territory of Europe contaminated after the Chernobyl accident (1986), have proved

that 137Cs can be accumulated in fungal fruit bodies (see Gillett and Crout, 2000,

for the recent review). Therefore, consumption of wild mushrooms, under certain

conditions can be regarded as a risky activity.From the viewpoint of risk perception, this research should be integrated in two

different areas: radiological and ‘‘ecological’’ risk perception.In what concerns the perception of radiological risk, the most important

conclusion from the preceding research is that there is no uniform or consistent

perception of radiation danger. Public perception and acceptance is determined by

the context in which radiation is used—and the very different reactions to different

uses provide insight into the nature of perception and the determinants of accept-

able risk. A second generalization is that in every context of use, with the exception

of nuclear weapons, public perceptions of radiation risk differ from the assessment

of most experts and its real effects (Slovic, 2000). However, many people still think

that amongst all pollutants the radioactive ones are the most hazardous, irrespec-

tive of their concentration and occurrence (Aarkrog, 2000).Probably one of the reasons for that erroneous perception is the absence of a

general understanding about the relative importance of the causal determinants of

the radioactive contamination processes. It might be the case that people apply to

this kind of reasoning due to the influence of the ‘‘dreadful’’ factor that is present

in the ‘‘radiation’’ (Fischhoff et al., 1978).Since the 1990s, some studies aimed to understand how people estimated global

environmental risk. For instance what is the degree of perceived destruction of the

global, regional and local ecosystem, the menace due to global environmental

change, industrial risk, etc. (for a review, see, Palma-Oliveira, 2001). The results

showed a consistent pattern where people express a high level of the environmental

risk perception, which might be counterbalanced with a lower risk perception of

the places where one is living (Palma-Oliveira, 2001). The present research aims to

integrate these two themes by comparing risk perception towards the consumption

of wild mushrooms across different world regions, and to determine the public’s

perception of radioactive contamination of wild mushrooms. Furthermore, it was

possible to confront public perception with ‘‘expert’’ opinion, and to determine

which explanatory factors of radioactive contamination are perceived differently or

similarly by specialists and lay people.

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2. Materials and methods

An exploratory risk perception study was performed based on an online ques-tionnaire located on the World Wide Web on a specially designed site. The surveycontained three groups of questions aimed to determine the perception of: (i) wildmushroom contamination, (ii) the scope and consequences of the Chernobyl acci-dent and (iii) the relative importance of the factors that probably control the radio-active contamination of wild fungi. A total of 237 responses were received. Theregional distribution was the following: Western Europe and North America—74(37 from Portugal), Eastern Europe—60 (37 from Russia), Central and NorthEurope—77 (51 from Austria). A group of 20 radioecologists and ecotoxicologistswas singled out as experts and compared with the other four groups of respon-dents: natural scientists (61), sociologists and psychologists (24), risk assessors (15)and a wide group of others (70)—all with a minimum of college education. It wasalso possible to distinguish between the respondents with background on Biologywith the ones that did not possess this background. Our assumption was that theinternet as a tool for data sampling should provide comparable sets of results fromdifferent world regions. Rural populations of heavily contaminated areas inUkraine and Belarus were not directly addressed.

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D3. Results and discussions

3.1. Perception of forest foodstuff contamination

The majority of respondents all over the world regularly consume wild mush-rooms. However, there is a significant difference between world regions: WesternEurope, North America1 and Central and Northern Europe respondents consumesignificantly fewer wild-growing mushrooms than those from Eastern Europe andRussia (ANOVA, Fð2; 207Þ ¼ 9:14 p < 0:0002). In what concerns collecting, 44%of the respondents stated that they never collect mushrooms in the forest, while32% do it regularly and only 5% are heavy mushroom collectors. EasternEuropeans do it more regularly (ANOVA, Fð2; 207Þ ¼ 33:78, p < 0:0000). Theseresults, both in consumption and collection probably reflect the strong traditionalbehavior of Eastern European people towards mushrooms.

Taking our sample as a whole, people assume that wild mushrooms are moder-ately contaminated (53%) while 28% think that they are significantly contaminated,and only six respondents (3%) chose the ‘‘strongly contaminated’’ evaluation.However, the perception of the quality of wild mushrooms is different dependingon the world region (Fig. 1, the dotted curve). The estimation of the wild mush-rooms’ quality given by Central and Northern European people is lower comparedto Western European and North American and, at the same time, higher than theone given by Eastern Europeans (ANOVA, F ð2; 206Þ ¼ 16:53, p < 0:0000).

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1 The opinion of 21 North American respondents did not differ from those of West Europeans,

(ANOVA, p > 0:05) therefore, two regions were grouped together.

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DInteresting results are obtained when the perception of relative importance ofvarious pollutants was estimated and different regions were compared. All con-taminants—radionuclides, heavy metals and organic pollutants were assumed asimportant. The risk perception of the role of these pollutants was always signifi-cantly higher in Eastern Europe (MANOVA, Rao Rð6; 406Þ ¼ 9:72, p < 0:0000).

The respondent’s evaluation of personal harm due to the consumption of poss-ibly contaminated forest food tends to the ‘‘dangerous’’ meaning (Fig. 1, the solidcurve). The highest, and statistically significantly different ‘individual’ harm percep-tions were shown by respondents from Central and Northern Europe (ANOVA,Fð2; 204Þ ¼ 20:58, p < 0:0000). Western Europe and North American respondentshave given significantly lower estimation of the danger of the consumption of suchfood (ANOVA, post hoc Tukey HSD test, p < 0:04). Respondents from EasternEurope and Russia have demonstrated a significantly low perception of the per-sonal danger due to the fungi consumption (ANOVA, post hoc Tukey HSD test,p < 0:04). This result contradicts the common sense expectation due to the factthat these people have the highest risk perception of the forest products contami-nation, the highest perception of the pollution of mushrooms by radionuclides.However, Eastern European and Russian respondents consume more wild mush-rooms and collect them in the forest quite often. Therefore, one can conclude thatthese people adopt their attitude to the disaster consequences thinking that thefood they consume and their forest are not dangerous. Another possible expla-nation is that these people assume the high level of other environmental risks (glo-bal environmental change, industrial risks, etc.) and consider the forest food as arelatively minor source of the danger.

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Fig. 1. Perceived contamination of wild mushrooms and personal danger from the consumption. (a–c),

Values with the same letter are not significantly different (ANOVA, post hoc Tukey HSD test, p < 0:05).

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In order to obtain a clear integrated vision that could shed some light over theseresults, it was essential to understand the people evaluation about the Chernobylaccident contribution to the global environment and to local forest (Fig. 2). In gen-eral, people have a relatively high perception of the importance of the Chernobylaccident to the global environment (average value is between ‘‘significant’’ and

‘‘very strong’’). Furthermore, statistically significant difference is detected betweenEastern Europeans and the other two groups. Citizens of these countries have ahigher perception of the Chernobyl impact compared to the other respondents(ANOVA, Fð2; 200Þ ¼ 8:88, p < 0:0002, post hoc Tukey HSD test), while there isno significant difference between Western and Central Europeans (ANOVA, posthoc Tukey HSD test).

Also in what concerns the perception of the contamination of their local forest,

significant differences were also found. Western European respondents have thelowest perception of possible radioactive contamination of their forest (ANOVA,Fð2; 202Þ ¼ 31:32, p < 0:000, post hoc Tukey HSD test). In contrast, CentralEuropean people show the highest level of the contamination perception (ANOVA,Fð2; 202Þ ¼ 31:32, p < 0:000, post hoc Tukey HSD test). It probably reflects theperception of a considerable contamination of this region after the Chernobyl acci-dent and the high level of public protest against nuclear energy in general, and is intune with the results described above (i.e., perception of a high level of personalharm and a relatively high level of global contamination due to Chernobyl).

However, the most unexpected data were obtained when the perception of thecontamination of local forest was investigated in Eastern Europe and Russia(Fig. 2). Thus, the perception of the contamination of their local forest is very low,and significantly different from the average value of Central and Western Eur-opeans (ANOVA, Fð2; 202Þ ¼ 31:32, p < 0:0000, post hoc Tukey HSD test).

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versus global perception of the environment contamination. (a–c), Values w

UFig. 2. Local ith the same

letter are not significantly different (ANOVA, post hoc Tukey HSD test, p < 0:05).

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In sum, these data show a consistent, but highly contra intuitive, Eastern

European pattern of results. In that way these respondents have a higher perceived

global contamination of wild mushrooms, a higher perception of the Chernobyl

global influence, but, at the same time a higher pattern of collecting and consum-

ing wild foodstuff while possessing the lower perception of possible personal harm

and of their local forest contamination. These results are understandable in the

light of the social psychology findings. It makes sense from an adaptive point of

view that, if you use your forest heavily, it would be impossible, to consider it as

highly contaminated.Furthermore, these results are also consistent with the data that show that your

‘‘place’’ is almost always considered as a safe heaven when compared with the

more regional aspect of the global environment (in order to boost your perception

of control) (Palma-Oliveira et al., 2002).

3.2. Perception of factors, which control the radioactive contamination of wildmushrooms

One of the major goals of this study was to confront respondents (‘‘experts’’ and

non-experts) with a list of factors, which describe and explain, in different degrees,

the radioactive contamination of wild mushrooms. In this way, we wanted to find

out how people would rate their relative importance. A group of 20 radioecologists

was isolated and treated as experts.The most important conclusion is that there is a high similarity between rank-

ings of the majority of factors across all respondents independently from their

expertise levels (Fig. 3). However, in a few cases, explained in detail above, there

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rception of factors which control the radioactive pollution of wild mushrooms. (a–c

UFig. 3. Pe ) Values

with the same letter are not significantly different (ANOVA, post hoc Tukey HSD test, p < 0:05).

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are significant differences. The most important is the evaluation of the relative

importance of fungal species, which is ranked by radioecologists as the second

most important parameter (ANOVA, Fð4; 168Þ ¼ 5:65, p < 0:0003). It is easy to

explain such experts’ opinion since the difference between transfers of radionuclides

to fungal fruit bodies often reaches three orders of magnitude depending on the

species (see Druzhinina, 2001 for the review and experimental study) and what sig-

nificantly complicates the attempts to predict the future long-term behavior of137Cs in forest ecosystems in general (Shaw and Venter, 2002). Non-radioecologists

attribute a medium importance to this factor. The most important factors for them

were the time after the pollution (ANOVA, Fð4; 168Þ ¼ 4:11, p < 0:0033) and the

distance from the source (ANOVA, Fð4; 166Þ ¼ 5:07, p < 0:0007), while experts

assume a medium importance for these two parameters. An explanation of such

difference in the perception of factors is based on the professional knowledge about

specific features of radioactive pollution.Therefore, we can conclude that the ranking of factors is not casual. When

people are confronted to the list of factors, which should be ranked, they start to

use their ‘‘forgotten’’ biological knowledge that is reasonably a good heuristic tool

to understand the problem. A significant difference between experts and

non-experts appears only in cases of specific factors, which cannot be known by

non-experts, and in the ‘‘extension’’ of their evaluation (i.e. the non-experts try not

to be extreme in order to ‘‘protect’’ them from gross errors). The degree of species-

specific accumulation of radionuclides by fungal fruit bodies is usually under-

estimated by non-experts, while the influence of the time after the pollution and the

factor of distance from the source of the contamination are overestimated. These

aspects should be considered in the case of the risk communication with potential

consumers of wild mushrooms.

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E4. Conclusions

This set of results seems to have, both, theoretical and practical consequences. In

what concerns the perception of contamination, it was found that the people that

have the higher potential of contamination within their environment are the ones

that, although recognizing the global problem, dismiss it completely when evaluat-

ing their local environment. This can be explained by the conjunction of their

behavioral pattern and the psychological adaptation implied by that pattern. This

can have broad consequences in their future health, as also in the design of an

information campaign.The perception of factors was important to understand that there exists not only

a common ‘‘biological’’ heuristics that is used as a tool amongst people, but also

that it could entail a fundamental error due to the specific way of radioactive con-

tamination of wild mushrooms. Again this understanding could help the designing

of an effective information tool.

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5. Aknowledgements

This research was conducted with the financial support of Austrian NationalBank, Jubilaumsfondsproject 8019. We thank A. Koptchinski for his help in web-design and VBA programming and W. Kromp for general support of the project.

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FReferences

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Gillett, A.G., Crout, N.M.J., 2000. A review of 137Cs transfer to fungi and consequences for modelling

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Palma-Oliveira, J.M., 2001. Ecological risk perception: the ‘‘Local Universal’’? In: Linkov, I., Palma-

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