In Louisville, Planting Urban Trees Is a Public Health Priority - Bloomberg
▻https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-12/in-louisville-planting-urban-trees-is-a-public-health-priority?cmpid=BBD0
Alors ça, c’est vraiment passionnant : planter des arbres, ce n’est pas uniquement bon pour le climat, mais aussi directement pour la santé humaine. Et c’est une étude de type comparative (type placebos) qui le montre !
And in late August, scientists at the University of Louisville released the results of a groundbreaking urban tree study. The $15 million Green Heart Louisville project, conducted with the Nature Conservancy and other partners, followed more than 700 residents across a four-square-mile area of south Louisville where about 8,000 trees and shrubs had been planted. According to the study, residents of these newly greened neighborhoods had 13% to 20% lower levels of a blood marker of general inflammation compared to residents in neighborhoods where no new greenery was added. Inflammation is a leading risk factor for heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
Aruni Bhatnagar, the project’s lead investigator and director of the university’s Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute, says that the study is the first to use a clinical trial design — a controlled intervention, rather than the usual observational studies — to probe how adding trees and greenery to urban space affects human health. It’s also the first such study to plant large, mature trees instead of saplings and utilize an evidence-based approach to guide their exact placement in the neighborhoods. Instead of planting based on aesthetics, for example, the team “measured where the levels of air pollution were highest and targeted the planting to those areas,” Bhatnagar said.
A different kind of spillover effect will take root during the planned next phase of the Green Heart study, according to Bhatnager. He explained that the “placebo” neighborhoods in the first phase — which didn’t get the new trees — will become the control group, putting them on the receiving end of new greenery. Researchers will investigate optimal tree species to maximize cooling and pollution control, as well as the impacts of greening neighborhoods on residential displacement, home values and gentrification, among other issues.
Spreading the health benefits to more people is another advantage of a study designed as a clinical trial, Bhatnagar said: “If the drug works, there is an intent to treat.”
#Arbres #Villes #Santé #Louisville