Team:SSHS-Shenzhen/Human Practices/5

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Survey of people about their opinions of chemical pesticide and its effect and insecticidal-genetic spray

Brief summary

In modern society, agriculture develops with the progress of science and technology. Diseases caused by insects and pests are one of the most serious problems that restrict the development of agriculture. Therefore, in order to investigate the general public's understanding of insecticidal-killing methods and the methods’ impact on the public, the iGEM team of Shenzhen Senior High school released an online survey that reported on this. This online questionnaire was released on July 22, 2018, Beijing time and collected on July 29, 2018, Beijing time. There were 15 multiple questions and we have got 1,414 answers.

Let’s have a close look at the data:

For Question1, 63.72% of people answered that they basically have no idea of genetic sprays. And for Question15, 83.03% of people didn’t know that the genetic spray was on the market selling by now. Both indicated that genetic spray as a kind of product wasn’t known by most of the people, which remind us of the imperative need for the popularization of our product. To combine with the data in Question8, we could see that the most well-known method for pest-killing was “pesticide” ( answered by 87.2% of people), and the second was “light trap” ( answered by 50.21% of people). Therefore, using pesticide and light trap are the most popularized method.

In fact, according to the survey data, it is not hard to find that people generally buy vegetables in vegetable markets (54.1%) and supermarkets (41.44%). In contrast, the reasons why people choose these places to buy vegetables are mainly because of convenience (46.46%) and freshness (25.74%). However, when people buy vegetables, their main concern is the freshness of vegetables (85.86%), while only a few people will pay attention to the information of pesticide residues（25.88%）. In the sixth and seventh question, 76.38% of people said they usually wouldn't buy vegetables by focusing on data of pesticide residues, but 74.68% of people said that hey knew the dangers of excessive pesticide residues, 74.54% of people thought it would lead to weaker immunity, 79.28% of people thought it could lead to chronic diseases, while 77.09% of people thought that it might cause cancer.....but there are also 61.03% of people thought that it would be bad for the environment. 55.59% of people said that they knew how to remove agricultural residues, 72.98% said they removed pesticide residues before cooking, and 62.02% had bought organic vegetables. This shows that most people have a basic understanding of the harm of agricultural residues and will remove them.

To sum up: People don't really know much about the use of genetic sprays, and traditional chemical pesticides are still the best-known way for them to kill insects and pests. They also have a basic understanding of pesticide residues and has a determined cognization and caution about food safety, but they do not seem to be willing to pay more time and money for it. According to our literal document, the harm caused by the use of chemical pesticides will be multi-directional. Therefore, we will conduct much more social investigations on chemical pesticides and some further study on genetic sprays, and finally compare the two products together in order to give the process of pest-killing a better choice.