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      Exposure to Greenness and Mortality in a Nationwide Prospective Cohort Study of Women.

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          Abstract

          Green, natural environments may ameliorate adverse environmental exposures (e.g., air pollution, noise, and extreme heat), increase physical activity and social engagement, and lower stress.

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          The Uncertain Geographic Context Problem

          Mei-Po Kwan (2012)
          Article 0 comments Cited 352 times – based on 0 reviews     Review now
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            A Review of the Health Benefits of Greenness.

            Peter James, Rachel Banay, Jaime Hart … (2015)
            Researchers are increasingly exploring how neighborhood greenness, or vegetation, may affect health behaviors and outcomes. Greenness may influence health by promoting physical activity and social contact; decreasing stress; and mitigating air pollution, noise, and heat exposure. Greenness is generally measured using satellite-based vegetation indices or land-use databases linked to participants' addresses. In this review, we found fairly strong evidence for a positive association between greenness and physical activity, and a less consistent negative association between greenness and body weight. Research suggests greenness is protective against adverse mental health outcomes, cardiovascular disease, and mortality, though most studies were limited by cross-sectional or ecological design. There is consistent evidence that greenness exposure during pregnancy is positively associated with birth weight, though findings for other birth outcomes are less conclusive. Future research should follow subjects prospectively, differentiate between greenness quantity and quality, and identify mediators and effect modifiers of greenness-health associations.
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              Regulation of the immune system by biodiversity from the natural environment: An ecosystem service essential to health

              Graham A. Rook (2013)
              Epidemiological studies suggest that living close to the natural environment is associated with long-term health benefits including reduced death rates, reduced cardiovascular disease, and reduced psychiatric problems. This is often attributed to psychological mechanisms, boosted by exercise, social interactions, and sunlight. Compared with urban environments, exposure to green spaces does indeed trigger rapid psychological, physiological, and endocrinological effects. However, there is little evidence that these rapid transient effects cause long-term health benefits or even that they are a specific property of natural environments. Meanwhile, the illnesses that are increasing in high-income countries are associated with failing immunoregulation and poorly regulated inflammatory responses, manifested as chronically raised C-reactive protein and proinflammatory cytokines. This failure of immunoregulation is partly attributable to a lack of exposure to organisms (“Old Friends”) from mankind’s evolutionary past that needed to be tolerated and therefore evolved roles in driving immunoregulatory mechanisms. Some Old Friends (such as helminths and infections picked up at birth that established carrier states) are almost eliminated from the urban environment. This increases our dependence on Old Friends derived from our mothers, other people, animals, and the environment. It is suggested that the requirement for microbial input from the environment to drive immunoregulation is a major component of the beneficial effect of green space, and a neglected ecosystem service that is essential for our well-being. This insight will allow green spaces to be designed to optimize health benefits and will provide impetus from health systems for the preservation of ecosystem biodiversity.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Environ. Health Perspect.
                Title: Environmental health perspectives
                Publisher: Environmental Health Perspectives
                ISSN (Electronic): 1552-9924
                ISSN (Print): 0091-6765
                Publication date (Electronic): Sep 2016
                Volume: 124
                Issue: 9
                Affiliations
                [1 ] Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
                Article
                Publisher Item ID: ehp.1510363
                DOI: 10.1289/ehp.1510363
                PMC ID: 5010419
                PubMed ID: 27074702
                SO-VID: 5147a5f8-5e6b-4cc0-813c-bb62394a9fcd
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