Media Coverage of Toxic Risks: A Content Analysis of Pediatric Environmental Health Information Available to New and Expecting Mothers

Mass media play a central role in providing environmental health information to the public. Despite several decades of environmental and health communication research, the nature of environmental health information available to one of the most vulnerable populations – new and expecting mothers – has received limited attention. To address this gap, this study poses two questions: (1) how prevalent is information related to prenatal and pediatric environmental health (PPEH) in the media? and (2) how much coverage do the most concerning chemical threats to PPEH receive? A content analysis of 2,550 texts in popular media sources (i.e., the Associated Press (AP), parenting magazines, and parenting websites) from September 2012 to February 2013 revealed that roughly three pieces of PPEH information were made available to mothers daily. Prior research has shown that media coverage of environmental health issues has decreased over the years; however, these results suggest at-risk populations likely encounter this type of information in the media. Also, while certain chemicals received ample coverage (i.e., pesticides, cigarette smoke, mercury), other concerning issues did not (i.e., lead, phthalates). This study also introduces a novel method for harvesting online content encountered incidentally. Implications of these findings for communication research and practice are discussed.