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Urban forest biodiversity and cardiovascular disease: Potential health benefits from California’s street trees
Enhanced immune functioning in response to biodiversity may explain potential health benefits from exposure to green space. Using unique data on urban forest biodiversity at the zip code level for California measured from 2014 to 2019 we test whether greater diversity of street trees is associated w...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8565780/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34731162 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254973 |
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author | Giacinto, John J. Fricker, G. Andrew Ritter, Matthew Yost, Jenn Doremus, Jacqueline |
author_facet | Giacinto, John J. Fricker, G. Andrew Ritter, Matthew Yost, Jenn Doremus, Jacqueline |
author_sort | Giacinto, John J. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Enhanced immune functioning in response to biodiversity may explain potential health benefits from exposure to green space. Using unique data on urban forest biodiversity at the zip code level for California measured from 2014 to 2019 we test whether greater diversity of street trees is associated with reduced death from cardiovascular disease. We find that urban forests with greater biodiversity measured via the Shannon Index at the genus level are associated with a lower mortality rate for heart disease and stroke. Our estimates imply that increasing the Shannon Index by one standard deviation (0.64) is associated with a decrease in the mortality rate of 21.4 per 100,000 individuals for heart disease or 13% and 7.7 per 100,000 individuals for stroke or 16%. Our estimates remain robust across several sensitivity checks. A policy simulation for tree planting in Los Angeles based on our estimates suggests that if these relationships were causal, investment in planting for a more biodiverse set of street trees would be a cost-effective way to reduce mortality related to cardiovascular disease in urban areas. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8565780 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-85657802021-11-04 Urban forest biodiversity and cardiovascular disease: Potential health benefits from California’s street trees Giacinto, John J. Fricker, G. Andrew Ritter, Matthew Yost, Jenn Doremus, Jacqueline PLoS One Research Article Enhanced immune functioning in response to biodiversity may explain potential health benefits from exposure to green space. Using unique data on urban forest biodiversity at the zip code level for California measured from 2014 to 2019 we test whether greater diversity of street trees is associated with reduced death from cardiovascular disease. We find that urban forests with greater biodiversity measured via the Shannon Index at the genus level are associated with a lower mortality rate for heart disease and stroke. Our estimates imply that increasing the Shannon Index by one standard deviation (0.64) is associated with a decrease in the mortality rate of 21.4 per 100,000 individuals for heart disease or 13% and 7.7 per 100,000 individuals for stroke or 16%. Our estimates remain robust across several sensitivity checks. A policy simulation for tree planting in Los Angeles based on our estimates suggests that if these relationships were causal, investment in planting for a more biodiverse set of street trees would be a cost-effective way to reduce mortality related to cardiovascular disease in urban areas. Public Library of Science 2021-11-03 /pmc/articles/PMC8565780/ /pubmed/34731162 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254973 Text en © 2021 Giacinto et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Giacinto, John J. Fricker, G. Andrew Ritter, Matthew Yost, Jenn Doremus, Jacqueline Urban forest biodiversity and cardiovascular disease: Potential health benefits from California’s street trees |
title | Urban forest biodiversity and cardiovascular disease: Potential health benefits from California’s street trees |
title_full | Urban forest biodiversity and cardiovascular disease: Potential health benefits from California’s street trees |
title_fullStr | Urban forest biodiversity and cardiovascular disease: Potential health benefits from California’s street trees |
title_full_unstemmed | Urban forest biodiversity and cardiovascular disease: Potential health benefits from California’s street trees |
title_short | Urban forest biodiversity and cardiovascular disease: Potential health benefits from California’s street trees |
title_sort | urban forest biodiversity and cardiovascular disease: potential health benefits from california’s street trees |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8565780/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34731162 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254973 |
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