Assessment of knowledge and perception of adverse health effects associated with self prevention from air pollution in Traffic Policemen Bangkok Thailand

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the association between knowledge and perception of adverse health effects associated with self-prevention from air pollution in traffic policemen in Bangkok, Thailand. This study was a cross sectional study which was selected by random sampling and self- administrated questionnaires from 223 participants. The data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics and using the Chi-square test and Fisher Exact Test. The result indicates that the respondents were 100% male and 45.7% aged between 41-50 years, 44.4% in Bachelor’s degree and found that 72.2% of respondents had not received information, and 74.4 % had not been trained. Most of the respondents had knowledge at moderate level 48.4 %. A minority of respondents had the perception of adverse health effects at poor level 2.7 % and had self-prevention behavior from air pollution at poor level 3.1 %. Furthermore, the knowledge was associated with socio-demographics characteristics in terms of education level, frequency of exercise, having chronic disease, information about air pollution and health effect and Training on prevention of air pollution at p-value as 0.011, 0.001, 0.028, 0.011 and 0.005, respectively. Knowledge of respondents were associated with perception of adverse health effects on health (p-value <0.001) and also associated with self-prevention behavior from air pollution (p-value <0.001). Last, the perception of adverse health effects was associated with self-prevention behavior from air pollution (p-value <0.043). This study recommended that government agencies and related organizations should provide traffic policemen with proactive programs in terms of knowledge about air pollution prevention behaviors and enhance health effect perceptions from air pollution in order to have more appropriate prevention behaviors.