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Environmental knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes regarding caffeine consumption among Chinese university students from the perspective of ecopharmacovigilance

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Abstract

Caffeine is considered the most representative pharmaceutical emerging contaminant (PEC) because of its ubiquity, high environmental abundance, uncovered ecological risks, and its indicator property for anthropogenic environmental inputs of PECs. Ecopharmacovigilance (EPV) targeting caffeine has been proposed as an optimized measure for the control of caffeine pollution sources and the related anthropogenic behaviors from the perspective of pharmacy administration. This cross-sectional study was conducted to evaluate the environmental knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes regarding caffeine consumption among university students, one of the groups with high caffeine consumption, from an EPV perspective. Three hundred and seven usable survey instruments were acquired. The mean score for environmental knowledge about caffeine consumption was 3.66 out of a total of 7. The consumption frequency of caffeinated drinks, food, or drugs among student respondents was low. Throwing away in “household garbage” was an important disposal mechanism for unconsumed caffeinated products. Most students showed positive attitudes and strong intentions toward caffeine pollution control from the perspective of targeted EPV. These data suggested high acceptance of EPV program targeting caffeine among university students. However, more should be done to enhance their related knowledge, and some strengthening interventions for the effective removal of residual caffeine in garbage are needed.

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Acknowledgments

We thank all student participants who volunteered to take part in this study.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Funding

This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71974153), Humanities and Social Science Foundation from Hubei Province Ministry of Education (No. 19D014), and Educational Science Planning Project in Hubei Province (No. 2019GB019).

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Authors

Contributions

JW conceptualized and supervised the study. SL, JG, BH, and JW designed the study and acquired the data. SL, JG, and YZ conducted the data analysis and interpreted the data. SL, BH, and YZ prepared the first draft. SL, JG, BH, and JW participated in critical revision of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jun Wang.

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Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The study protocol as well as the final questionnaire were approved by the ethics committee of the Medicine College, Wuhan University of Science and Technology. An informed consent was signed by all research participants, and the privacy of participants and confidentiality of the data was put into consideration.

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Not applicable.

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Responsible editor: Lotfi Aleya

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Li, S., Guo, J., He, B. et al. Environmental knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes regarding caffeine consumption among Chinese university students from the perspective of ecopharmacovigilance. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 5347–5358 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-10878-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-10878-x

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