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It’s not news that living green and going green definitely help humankind with good health. Of course, there have been a lot of studies that reveal the role of greens in reducing stress and anxiety amongst people. A study around living in green spaces and how they help you live longer has been recently published in The Lancet Planetary Health and the meta-analysis does show reliable evidence on how green urban spaces can help people live longer.
The study was organized by the Barcelona Institute of Global Health (IS Global) based out of Spain and in association with Colorado State University in Fort Collins. As per the director of urban planning, Environment and Health initiative at IS Global, the study does show that green spaces are responsible for the reduction in premature immortality.
He also added that green spaces can help climate mitigation by reducing health island as well as air pollution effects in cities. But there was a lack of green spaces in cities mostly. Dr. Mark added ‘ Green space is also good for carbon sequestration. So there are multiple beneficial effects. And increasing green space can, therefore, reduce a significant number of premature deaths in cities.
The study was required by WHO as they wanted to develop a health impact assessment tool for green interventions in and around urban places. Particularly, WHO wanted to find out the connection between green spaces and premature deaths so that they could design tools needed for green interventions.
Dr. Nieuwenhuijsen further said “ We systematically searched for and included all the cohort studies we could find on NDVI, an easily obtainable green space measure, and premature mortality and conducted a meta-analysis.
The study involved 8 million people from countries like the USA, China, Spain, Italy, Australia, Switzerland, and Canada. The study was startling and revealed that for an increase in 0.1 vegetative scores around 500 meters of a home, there was a decrease in the mortality rate by 4%. These startling revelations are an eye-opener about the importance of green spaces on earth.
