Communication In Water Contamination Events

Moderator’s Guide: Pawtuxet Focus Groups

Hello and welcome to our session. Thank you for taking the time to join our discussion of water contamination issues. My name is Jessica Galante, and I’m a student at Brown University. I’m working on a thesis about communication regarding water contamination, and I asked you to come here to discuss your thoughts and feelings on water contamination issues.
Has anyone ever been in a focus group before?

Of course there are no right or wrong answers to anything we discuss here, and please feel free to share your point of view even if it differs from what others have said. We’ll be talking for about an hour, and I’d really like to hear what you have to say on these issues.

Everything said here is confidential, which means that your names will not appear anywhere later. Also, I’d like to tape record this interview. Because lots of good ideas get talked about, sometimes rather quickly in a focus group, I won’t be taking very many notes. I want to listen and talk with you. I can then go over the tape later and remember what everyone said. Do I have everyone’s permission to tape?

If, at any time during the interview, you do not want to continue, please let me know and we can stop. Does anyone have any questions before we begin?

First, let’s go around and have each person say their first name and how long they’ve lived in the area.

Who has municipal water, and who has a private well?

Do you know where the municipal water comes from?

Now, what generally would you say is the quality of your drinking water in this town?

• What makes it good/bad?
  

How do you think your water compares to drinking water in other parts of the state?

• Why? How did you hear that?
  

In your opinion, what are the major threats to drinking water in Rhode Island?

When you hear the word “contaminant”, what comes to mind?

Has anyone ever had contamination issues with their water?

• What type of contamination?
• When was this?
• How long did it last?
  

Have you ever thought or been concerned that your water would become contaminated?

What concerns did you have?

Can you think of recent water problems in the state—say in the last 5 years?

• What were they?
  
• Any idea what caused them?
  
• How long they lasted?
  
• [discuss Pascoag if mentioned]
  

Now I’d like for everyone to imagine a general situation. You’re watching the 5 o’clock news, and the newscaster says that the Health Department has just announced that residents of Cranston should avoid using their tap water. That’s all they say.

How do you react?

What do you do?

What sorts of things would you want to know?

What makes that important?

Why is that important to you?

Now let’s say you keep watching the news, and by 11 o’clock they announce that the contaminant is a chemical. You’ve never heard of it before, and you don’t know anything about it. Let’s just call it chemical X.

Where is the first place you turn to get information?

Where are some other places you can go to get information?

Why would you get information from that source?

Would you rely on information from that source?

How would you know to go to that source?

What do you want to know? What questions would you have for those sources?

What makes that important?

Why is that important to you?

What are some things you think other people might want to know?

Why do you think that might be important to them?

Where do you think other people might get their information from?

Who would you trust to give you this information?

Let’s make our scenario even more specific. You read the newspaper the next morning, and you find that the chemical found in the water is MTBE.
Has anyone ever heard of MTBE before?

Now, let’s take some examples of information you might get. You get a fact sheet at your door from an official. The fact sheet tells you first, not to drink your water. Then it says:
[read] Exposure to MTBE in your water does not exceed federal risk levels. Federal guidance on MTBE exposures using studies is not consistent. One federal agency, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, provides guidelines for safe exposures up to one year-including exposures for individuals who are known to be sensitive to chemicals. The levels of MTBE in Pascoag drinking water do not exceed these federal guidance levels--studies do not indicate that there are health effects at these levels.

What would you think after reading that?

What questions would that information answer?

Would it give you any more questions you wanted answered?

Do you think you would change your behavior in any way based on that information?

Let’s try another example. You read in the newspaper that:
[read] The EPA lists 92 contaminants that can taint water in sufficient quantities to make it unsafe for drinking. MTBE, the chemical that recently fouled the public water supply for the homes and businesses in the town, is not even on that EPA list because nobody knows how toxic it is to humans. To be on the safe side, the state Department of Health has told water customers not to drink the water until the source of the MTBE is identified, and the chemical is cleared from the water.

What would you think after reading that?

Does this example make you feel any differently that the first one?

What questions would that information answer?

Do you think you would change your behavior in any way based on that information?

Let’s try another example. A week after you on the news that there’s MTBE in your water, there’s a public meeting held at the Hall Library. Representatives fro the Health Department, the Department of Environmental Management, and a couple other state agencies are there. There are a lot of residents-the room is packed. After listening to the official presentation, you go to the microphone and say, “I have a cold I didn’t have before this. My husband has been suffering from headaches this whole time. I’m worried about children who played in the pool all summer. Three parents have talked to me about rashes that their kids have had almost all summer, and they’ve never had skin problems before. What we want to know is that with all these strange symptoms, what’s the long range effect on our health going to be? Should we be tested for anything?"

An official gives you this answer: "While we don’t know all the effects of MTBE people can have, these kinds of exposure levels do not exceed federal risk levels and do not cause long-term health problems."

What would you think after hearing that?

Is that response satisfactory or unsatisfactory to you?

What questions would that information answer?

Would it give you any more questions you wanted answered?

If you had a question that you wanted answered, and officials said that they didn’t know theanswer, would you believe them?

Why? Why not?

What would you want them to say if they didn’t know?

What do you think they should do if they don’t know the answer?

So—what do you think are the most important things for officials to keep in mind when talking to people about water contamination?

Anything else you’d like to say?

What was said in these focus groups? How did participants respond?

Jessica Galante