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Mediation pathways and effects of green structures on respiratory mortality via reducing air pollution

Previous studies have shown both health and environmental benefits of green spaces, especially in moderating temperature and reducing air pollution. However, the characteristics of green structures have been overlooked in previous investigations. In addition, the mediation effects of green structure...

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Autores principales: Shen, Yu-Sheng, Lung, Shih-Chun Candice
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5322332/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28230108
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep42854
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author Shen, Yu-Sheng
Lung, Shih-Chun Candice
author_facet Shen, Yu-Sheng
Lung, Shih-Chun Candice
author_sort Shen, Yu-Sheng
collection PubMed
description Previous studies have shown both health and environmental benefits of green spaces, especially in moderating temperature and reducing air pollution. However, the characteristics of green structures have been overlooked in previous investigations. In addition, the mediation effects of green structures on respiratory mortality have not been assessed. This study explores the potential mediation pathways and effects of green structure characteristics on respiratory mortality through temperature, primary and secondary air pollutants separately using partial least squares model with data from Taiwan. The measurable characteristics of green structure include the largest patch percentage, landscape proportion, aggregation, patch distance, and fragmentation. The results showed that mortality of pneumonia and chronic lower respiratory diseases could be reduced by minimizing fragmentation and increasing the largest patch percentage of green structure, and the mediation effects are mostly through reducing air pollutants rather than temperature. Moreover, a high proportion of but fragmented green spaces would increase secondary air pollutants and enhance health risks; demonstrating the deficiency of traditional greening policy with primary focus on coverage ratio. This is the first research focusing on mediation effects of green structure characteristics on respiratory mortality, revealing that appropriate green structure planning can be a useful complementary strategy in environmental health management.
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spelling pubmed-53223322017-03-01 Mediation pathways and effects of green structures on respiratory mortality via reducing air pollution Shen, Yu-Sheng Lung, Shih-Chun Candice Sci Rep Article Previous studies have shown both health and environmental benefits of green spaces, especially in moderating temperature and reducing air pollution. However, the characteristics of green structures have been overlooked in previous investigations. In addition, the mediation effects of green structures on respiratory mortality have not been assessed. This study explores the potential mediation pathways and effects of green structure characteristics on respiratory mortality through temperature, primary and secondary air pollutants separately using partial least squares model with data from Taiwan. The measurable characteristics of green structure include the largest patch percentage, landscape proportion, aggregation, patch distance, and fragmentation. The results showed that mortality of pneumonia and chronic lower respiratory diseases could be reduced by minimizing fragmentation and increasing the largest patch percentage of green structure, and the mediation effects are mostly through reducing air pollutants rather than temperature. Moreover, a high proportion of but fragmented green spaces would increase secondary air pollutants and enhance health risks; demonstrating the deficiency of traditional greening policy with primary focus on coverage ratio. This is the first research focusing on mediation effects of green structure characteristics on respiratory mortality, revealing that appropriate green structure planning can be a useful complementary strategy in environmental health management. Nature Publishing Group 2017-02-23 /pmc/articles/PMC5322332/ /pubmed/28230108 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep42854 Text en Copyright © 2017, The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
spellingShingle Article
Shen, Yu-Sheng
Lung, Shih-Chun Candice
Mediation pathways and effects of green structures on respiratory mortality via reducing air pollution
title Mediation pathways and effects of green structures on respiratory mortality via reducing air pollution
title_full Mediation pathways and effects of green structures on respiratory mortality via reducing air pollution
title_fullStr Mediation pathways and effects of green structures on respiratory mortality via reducing air pollution
title_full_unstemmed Mediation pathways and effects of green structures on respiratory mortality via reducing air pollution
title_short Mediation pathways and effects of green structures on respiratory mortality via reducing air pollution
title_sort mediation pathways and effects of green structures on respiratory mortality via reducing air pollution
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5322332/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28230108
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep42854
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