Unseen Threat: Environmental Health Risk Awareness and Perception of Tap Water Drinking In Miami Dade County

Recently, public goods such as water, electricity, education and health care have become the subject of privatization under a free market economy pushed by global economics recessions and deregulation forces. Since the beginning of the twenty first century, the issue of safe water has been on the forefront of both the local and global health issues. The unprecedented attention on world most essential commodity-the blue gold has called for multidisciplinary research in allied and Social Sciences. In spite of the recent risk awareness on water quality contamination and the 2001 EPA report on acceptable standard reduction for arsenic dose in drinking water from 50ppb to 10 ppb, there is no consensus on exact dose-mortality relationship. Several studies have been carried out to analyze people's perception and attitude about drinking water coming from their water distribution systems. The paper seeks to examine how socio-ecological factors shaped households risk perception of tap water as a viable source of drinking water amongst households in Miami Dade county area. Their perception is in turn used as a springboard to espoused various behavioral attitudes related to health risk and waterborne epidemics. The study is based on primary data obtained through the use of structured household survey questionnaire, which was administered randomly in the study area with the aim of eliciting information on respondent's perception of tap water, demographic variables, environmental characteristics and their level of concern for a variety of socio-environmental health risk issues related to tap water consumption. Although, there are spatial variations in respondent's risk perception of drinking tap water, data analysis based on multivariate regression model suggested that the importance of socio economic characteristics of respondents have more impact than the ecological factors. Household preference for tap water or budget for bottled water is more impacted by income and level of education. This study finding has implication for positively impacting the perceived health benefit and risk communication regarding public health safety and access to clean water amongst vulnerable groups.