Environmental knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes regarding caffeine consumption among Chinese university students from

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RESEARCH ARTICLE

Environmental knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes regarding caffeine consumption among Chinese university students from the perspective of ecopharmacovigilance Shulan Li 1 & Jie Guo 1 & Bingshu He 2 & Yujie Zhu 1 & Jun Wang 1 Received: 24 June 2020 / Accepted: 15 September 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020

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. Keywords Caffeine . Pharmaceutical emerging contaminant . Ecopharmacovigilance . University students . Knowledge . Behaviors . Attitudes

Introduction In recent years, pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), food additives, and other consumer products as emerging contaminants generated by human activities have been frequently detected in the natural environment in the world (Sophia and Lima 2018). In particular, the occurrence of pharmaceutical emerging contaminants (PECs) has been a growing concern due to its potential threats to the environment and human health (He et al. 2018; Li et al. 2020a, b).

Responsible editor: Lotfi Aleya * Jun Wang [email protected] 1

Hubei Province Key Laboratory of Occupational Hazard Identification and Control, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

2

Hubei Province Woman and Child Hospital, Wuhan, China

Currently, more and more attentions have been paid to a widely consumed psychostimulant substance—caffeine, which is one of the most abundant PECs existing in a variety of aquatic environmental matrices, including wastewater, river, groundwater, seawater, even drinking water, around the world (Ali et al. 2017; Cesen et al. 2019;