Put down the apple, folks. A recent study finds that a tree may be just the thing to keep the doctor away.
In urban areas, trees perform many healthy functions. They shade sidewalks, suck up air pollution, soften traffic noise, all while being nice to look at. Trees also take climate-warming carbon out of the atmosphere. They’re not just good for our longevity, but for the planet’s too.
Did you know that all the gains of greenery add up?
A recent study conducted in Portland, Oregon, found that in neighborhoods where a nonprofit planted more trees, fewer people died. The paper, by researchers at the U.S. Forest Service, adds to a budding body of research focusing on the health benefits of living around greenery. Its findings amount to a prescription for policymakers to plant more trees.
“Urban trees are an essential part of a public health infrastructure, and they should be treated as such,” said Geoffrey Donovan, the Forest Service researcher who led the study published in last December’s Environment International.
Green Healthcare
For three decades, the Portland nonprofit Friends of Trees planted nearly 50,000 oaks, dogwoods, and other arboreal species around the city, giving Donovan and his colleagues granular data on how its canopy has changed over time.
Using a mathematical model to control for factors such as race, income, age and education, the team found that for each 100 trees planted, there was roughly one fewer nonaccidental death a year.
Yashar Vasef, the executive director of the nonprofit Friends of Trees, says that, “Across the board, the benefits of trees are astounding.” Vasef’s organization plants trees across six counties in Oregon and Washington. He also notes that trees come in “at a lower cost than many other solutions.”
The health benefits of living among trees proliferated as the trees themselves grew. As the trees got older, grew taller and cast their leafy limbs wider, the mortality rates among people nearby went down, the study found.
As one researcher noted, “The bigger the tree, the bigger the impact on mortality.” Essentially this study supports growing research pointing to the fact that urban trees prolong lives.
More trees, fewer deaths
The findings are in line with results from other researchers suggesting nature is good medicine for many ailments, including depression and high blood pressure. Another recent study in the British medical journal The Lancet suggested a third of the premature deaths caused by an unprecedented 2015 heat wave in Europe could have been avoided with just 30 percent more trees covering urban areas across the continent.
“Many other global studies have looked at similar research questions but use different study designs,” said David Rojas-Rueda, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Colorado State University. Rojas-Rueda has studied the health benefits of vegetation but was not involved in this latest particular study. He goes on to say, “Most evidence confirms that tree planting is beneficial in reducing premature mortality.’
There are several reasons trees may boost health, including better air quality, stress reduction and increased physical activity among people living in tree-lined neighborhoods. The link between planting trees and lowering death rates held in already leafy neighborhoods, which tend to be wealthier, and tree-deprived neighborhoods, which tend to be poorer.
“Studies have found links between exposure to the natural environment and improved health in a wide range of different cities and countries,” Donovan said. “We certainly know that air pollution, stress, and sedentary behavior are bad for people no matter their race or socioeconomic status.”
The reverse also seems to be true because mortality rates appear to go up in areas that lose tree cover. In a previous study, Donovan and his colleagues saw an increase in deaths related to cardiovascular and lower-respiratory-tract illness in counties from Minnesota to New York that lost trees to a wood-burrowing pest called the emerald ash borer.
To be clear, the Portland study has its limitations. The researchers did not have access to individual health records. Instead, the team looked at the neighborhood’s overall deaths. The researchers also did not have other detailed data that could speak to local residents’ quality of health such as the smoking rate and obesity levels. The paper stopped short of asserting a direct cause-and-effect relationship between trees and mortality.
Still, Donovan has taken this research to heart. A resident of Portland since 2002, he has planted fig, plum and pear trees in his yard in Oregon. “I’m quite fond of fruit trees,’ he said. ‘When you get a sun-warmed fig in that bowl of yogurt and honey, it’s not so terrible.’
Sounds pretty yummy to us. We hope you found the information in this article interesting and useful. We look forward to bringing you tree news you can use from around the globe each and every week. We do appreciate your business and please note that we are still working through the backlog of requests from February’s ice storm. Your business is important to us and we will get to your request as soon as we are able. Thank you so much for your patience.
