Want to live long — look for an area with normal trees. Scientists have found that trees save lives from heart attacks, while lawns can even harm health
For many years, greening was considered something uniform: the main thing, they said, was to have more greenery. But a new large-scale study by American scientists has shown that greening can be different. While trees outside windows really save our blood vessels and heart, simple fields and lawns can even worsen statistics.
A new work by American scientists, published in the journal Environmental Epidemiology, for the first time detailed the influence of different types of vegetation on heart health, using artificial intelligence and a pedestrian's perspective, analyzed, as noted by the Telegram channel cybulinka.
A Pedestrian's Perspective
Researchers used deep learning algorithms to analyze 350 million Google Street View panoramas across the United States. The neural network literally parsed each image pixel by pixel, highlighting trees, grass, and other greenery (bushes or flowers).
These data were compared with the health history of 88,788 participants in the large-scale "Nurses' Health Study", who were observed for 18 years. This approach allowed scientists to assess precisely the environment that people see daily outside their windows and during walks.
Trees Save, Grass — Not Always
The results of the analysis turned out to be ambiguous and, to some extent, counterintuitive.
Scientists recorded that a high percentage of visible trees within a 500-meter radius of a home was statistically associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular diseases, with this link being most pronounced for ischemic heart disease.
At the same time, an increase in the area of lawns and other low vegetation, conversely, correlated with an increased risk of diseases. These findings remained valid even after accounting for factors such as income level, air pollution, population density, and patients' lifestyles.
Why Can a Lawn Be Harmful?
The explanation for this difference lies in physiological and ecological mechanisms.
Trees are significantly more effective at reducing stress through a direct psychophysiological response of the body, and also excellent at neutralizing urban noise, filtering air, and mitigating extreme heat thanks to their powerful shade.
Grass and small bushes practically lack such protective properties. Moreover, maintaining ideal lawns often requires the use of pesticides and regular operation of noisy internal combustion engine lawnmowers, which creates an additional burden on the ecology and nervous system.
Also, large grassy areas in the US are often indicative of low-density development areas where the urban environment does not encourage walking, forcing residents to rely on cars.
Researchers emphasize that the use of general satellite greenery indices may have previously masked this heterogeneity, mixing beneficial trees with potentially harmful factors associated with lawn maintenance.
Verdict for the Concrete Jungle
For residents of cities like Minsk, where in new districts all greening consists of grass and frail saplings between fields of asphalted parking lots, this study sounds like an alarming signal.
For public health, this means a need to revise urban greening strategies. Scientists urge politicians and architects to prioritize the development of "urban forests" and the preservation of mature trees, as investments in tree cover bring significantly greater medical benefits than the creation of ordinary meadows and flowerbeds.
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