Table 3.
Extracts of verbatim used to select determinants of EDC risk perception obtained from the qualitative study.
| Determinants | Verbatim |
|---|---|
| Age | “the more the women are advanced in age, in pregnancies, the more likely they are to be concerned about that, because they take time to read and get informed” (FG, participant No. 1). “[A young woman] has other concerns, such as unwanted pregnancies among those with precarious social backgrounds” (FG, participant No. 2). |
| Strong maternal figure |
“So, it is always the mom who has, I think, a big influence on a pregnant woman, the patient’s mother really has an advisory role and sometimes she is more listened to than the midwife” (FG, participant No. 1). “[…] not necessarily towards their mother, but a strong maternal figure anyway” (FG, participant No. 1). “because the mother already had children, she knows what to do in such or such a case” (FG, participant No. 1). “What were you told, my girl? I had many children and had no problems with that, it doesn’t matter” (FG, participant No. 6). |
| Socio-economic category | “Regarding bisphenol-A, the moms who came to see me to ask what can be used as baby bottles, they were people with a higher socio-economic level” (FG, participant No. 2). “the (women with) lower socio-economic background used more canned food” (FG, participant No. 2). The interviewed women with a higher intellectual or intermediate profession consumed little canned food, whereas the unemployed women admitted to consuming cans of food, without indicating the frequency.—We found that unemployed women cooked some of their food in microwave oven, in plastic containers, whereas women having a higher intellectual profession avoided it. |
| Level of information: - Level of knowledge about EDC - Media visibility |
“bisphenol-A, they
[pregnant women]
understand, because there was the big issue with it, there were the baby bottles made of bisphenol-A” (FG, participant No. 1); “[parabens] were mediatized as bad products and people tried to remove them as best they could” (PW No. 12, about cosmetics containing parabens). “we have seen that bisphenol-A is now forbidden” (PW No. 4). “The communication of manufacturers on labels without parabens, or without bisphenol A, is contributory [to heightened EDC risk perception]” (FG, participant No. 5). Mediatized information about EDC was perceived by pregnant women as: Stressful: “[…] Scientific considerations, which can also be stressful, even counterproductive” (FG, participant No. 7). Incomprehensible: “It still raises a problem for them because labels are incomprehensible” (FG, participant No. 1), “I find it is really hard to analyze labels” (PW No. 4, about choice of cosmetics). |
| Invisibility and ubiquity of EDC exposure (Involuntary exposure) | “It [EDC] is less visible [than alcohol or tobacco], on the bottle we can see it, on the pack of cigarettes we can see it” (FG, participant No. 1). “It [EDC] can be toxic, like cigarettes, tobacco, alcohol, but it is less visible” (FG, participant No. 2). “Tobacco is smoked; alcohol is drunk, whereas for the EDCs we cannot talk about “air consumption” or “container consumption” and it makes a big difference” (FG, participant No. 2). “That is what is stressful about them [of EDC], we do not know, we do not see” (FG, participant No. 1) |
FG: Focus Group; PW: Pregnant Woman.