Team:HBUT-China/Human Practices/Questionnaire Survey
Questionnaire Survey
Nickel is an essential life element of the human body. Nickel deficiency can cause diabetes, anemia, cirrhosis, uremia, renal failure, abnormalities in liver lipids and phospholipid metabolism. However, nickel is also the most common allergic metal. Nickel ions can penetrate into the skin through pores and sebaceous glands, causing skin irritation and inflammation. For what is worse， the poisoning caused by excessive nickel intake. Ingestion of 250 mg of soluble nickel per day can cause poisoning. The most common symptoms are dermatitis, respiratory disorders and respiratory cancer. The survey shows that nickel content is positively correlated with the mortality of nasopharyngeal carcinoma, and nickel may be one of the causative factors of leukemia. Nickel-containing wastewater can be produced in industries such as mining, metallurgy, machine building, chemicals, instrumentation, petrochemicals, textiles, steel mills, iron foundries, automotive and aircraft manufacturing, printing, ink, ceramics, and glass. But the existing methods of treatment are always unsatisfactory. So we have this project, trying to use the knowledge of synthetic biology to remove nickel from water resources. Based on this, we would like to know the Chinese people's cognition of China's water pollution and heavy metal pollution, as well as their knowledge and acceptance of synthetic biology, in order to fully complete this project. Therefore, we designed a questionnaire and analyzed the findings in this report.
To investigate the current status of awareness about nickel pollution and synthetic biology among Chinese people so as to provide scientific data to guide future science popularization and education efforts.
957 Chinese respondents filled in an online questionnaire.
957 Chinese respondents were investigated by random sampling in an online survey from August 6th to August 14th 2018 (8 days in total). The anonymous questionnaire was of our own design. The data were collected and analyzed using SOJUMP online.
A total of 957 filled questionnaires were collected in this investigation. Most of the population was among the 18-25 and 41-50 years old age groups, respectively accounting for 66.04% and 11.18% of the total. The age 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.
In the survey population, most of them are students，accounting for 64.37% of all respondents.
About half (53.61%) of the respondents felt that the water pollution situation was normal. 27.06% people felt that the pollution was serious. For everyone's usual drinking water, few people (23.3%) is relieved. most people think that the source of water pollution is industrial pollution (85.79%) and domestic wastewater and garbage (84.74%). Most people are more worried about water pollution to the human body (69.17%) and aquatic animals ( 63.95%).At the same time, most people (83.49%) believe that the problem of improving water quality is mainly the responsibility of the polluting enterprises themselves. Although more people (68.03%) understand the environmental pollution and harm to humans caused by heavy metal ions, only 16.61% of the methods for treating nickel pollution with microorganisms have no worries, and only about half of them (52.25%) completely willing to use the microbiologically treated aquatic products that our team plans to develop. This shows that most people still have some understanding of water pollution and heavy metal pollution. However, there is still a certain psychological burden for using biological methods to deal with water pollution. Therefore, our follow-up publicity and public education are very necessary.
Among the 957 respondents, most of them heard (46.08%), understood (11.7%) or learned (8.46%) about synthetic biology. Only 2.93% people’s attitude towards synthetic biology is objected. However, 42.01% people expressed concern. I think most people may be worried about the ethical issues of synthetic biology.
According to this survey, we learned that with the development of science and technology, it has also brought more and more environmental pollution problems. Most people say that there is a certain amount of pollution in life, and everyone is also concerned about pollution, and express the eager hope and concern for solving the pollution problem. This is gratifying.
As for synthetic biology, its awareness rate is greater than our expectations, but there is still a long way to go in science education, especially in biological methods for wastewater treatment and synthetic biology. On the one hand, we have to appropriately strengthen people's concerns about biological methods for treating sewage. On the other hand, we must work harder to increase the popularity of synthetic biology and try to shape a more positive and realistic biological image, especially considering that it is not just environmentally friendly. It is the responsibility of iGEMers to focus on the popularization and improvement of synthetic biology.
Human Practices
Introduction
Objective
Subjects
Methods
Results
General demographic situation
Age structure
Occupation
Awareness of water，heavy metal pollution
Awareness of synthetic biology
Analysis chart
Conclusion