Health, Life

City Sees Lower Death Rights Simply By Planting Trees

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Planting trees can be good for the environment, but there may be something more than meets the eye. This simple act can be good for people as well. In fact, it comes with more benefits than people have originally thought.

Oregonians had a mass tree planting event decades ago, and research saw that 30 years of this, the people who lived near the area benefited from it greatly because they were at lower risks of death from cardiovascular disease. There was also a decline in non-accidental deaths.

The study that had taken place took advantage of this wonderful chance when the non-profit Friends of Trees planted nearly 50,000 street trees in Portland. They then observed what happened and wrote down in a detailed record of when and where they were placed.

The research team that did this was made up of scientists from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health and the United States Department of Agriculture. They took close count of the number of trees planted per census tract (which is blocks of 4,000 inhabitants) in the successive 5, 10, and 15 years. They then took the figures and mace a comparison with the mortality data that was provided by the Oregon Health Authority.

They saw that in towns where more trees were placed, there were lower mortality rates with 6 percent lower for cardiovascular disease and around 20 percent for non-accidental excess mortality. Aside from that, the link was even higher when they took count for areas that had older the trees. The findings suggested that the preservation of mature trees in these areas could be considered a public health issue.

To further confirm their findings, they compared the 6 percent lower risk and found that this was more than the absolute risk reduction of cardiovascular disease for those who had been prescribed with statin inhibitors. These inhibitors are one of the first treatment options for those with higher risks of CVD. This was according to a meta-analysis of 21 studies that monitored 140,000 people.

“We observed the effect both in green and less green neighborhoods, which suggests that street tree planting benefits both,” said Geoffrey H. Donovan. He is from the USDA Forest Service and is first author of the study.

When they study was placed together, the authors also included a financial assessment of the cost of upkeep for these trees that lined the streets against the cost of years of life lost when there were less to zero trees around, and hence, there were no risk reductions.

They made such an astounding discovery because they noticed that the annual cost of planting and maintaining one urban tree in each of the city’s 140 census tract areas would cost anywhere between $3,000 and $13,000. While this may sound high, the act itself would generate them around $14.2 million annually in terms of lives getting saved.

GNN has reported on similar studies before. In fact, they did this in 2019. This was when research from the University of Illinois found that Medicare costs were not as high in counties with more forests and shrub-lands as compared to areas that had more of the other types of land cover.

2021 study that came from the University of Wollongong, Australia, also saw that in areas that had a tree canopy of 30 percent or more, the adults there experienced a 31 percent lower chance of developing psychological distress, and 33 percent lower chance of considering their general health as “fair” or “poor” within the 6 years.