Trees Improve Your Health

Vocabulary

• Neuroscientist
• Environment
• Associate professor
• Surveys
• Perception

Article

Trees clean the air, provide shade, and reduce climate changing emissions. And, says environmental neuroscientist Marc Berman, they also improve the health of people who live near them.

“I’m very interested in how the physical environment affects the brain and behaviour,” says Berman, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Chicago. His study of the effect of urban trees, published in the journal Nature, combined tree data and health surveys from 31,000 residents of Toronto, Canada. “We found that, controlling for income and age and education, neighbourhoods that had more trees on the street … that was related to improved health in those neighbourhoods.”

The study found that planting ten more street trees per city block was related to a one percent increase in people’s health, as self-reported in the surveys. Berman says people in those blocks suffered less from hypertension and obesity compared with other neighbourhoods with fewer trees.

“And that one percent increase in health perception seems pretty modest, but at least in our study to get that equivalent increase with money, you’d have to give every household in that city block $10,000 and have them move to a neighbourhood that is $10,000 wealthier or make people seven years younger.”

Sounds pretty good, but could what works in Toronto work elsewhere? Berman says it would, if you increase the number of trees on the street by ten. Projects to plant more trees can improve air quality, relieve stress and promote physical activity — all of which are better for health.

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Speaking

• What do you think about this study?
• What are the most important benefits from trees?
• Are there many trees near your home?
• Do you prefer living in the city or country?
• Have you ever been involved in a project to plant trees?

Writing

• Is it healthy for people to worry about the environment?

Listening

• Describe what happened in this video. How were the trees useful?