Increasing urban greenery could have prevented at least 34,000 US deaths over two decades

A new analysis on greenery and mortality found that between 34,000-38,000 deaths could have been reduced with local increases in green vegetation in US metropolitan areas.

Increasing greenery in US urban areas may substantially reduce mortality of all causes, according to a new study led by Boston University School of Public Health researchers.

Published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health, the nationwide study found that increasing green vegetation in large, metropolitan areas could have prevented between 34,000-38,000 deaths, based on data from 2000-2019. The study also showed that overall greenness in metro areas has increased in the past 20 years, by nearly 3 percent between 2000-2010 and 11 percent between 2010-2019.

The study builds upon well-established research on the health benefits of greenness by providing a quantitative value to the potential impact of urban greening initiatives on mortality.

“We’ve known that living in greener areas can have a positive impact on our physical and mental health, but there is a lack of data on how changes in greenness distribution can affect death rates across the country,” says study lead author Paige Brochu, a PhD student in the Department of Environmental Health. “Our study quantifies the impact of greenness expansion in urban areas and shows how increasing green vegetation could potentially add to a person’s life expectancy. Policymakers and urban planners can use this information to support local climate action plans and ensure that those plans include greening initiatives.”

For the study, Brochu and colleagues utilized publicly available population data from the US Census, mortality data from Centers for Disease Control WONDER system and greenness data from NASA’s Landsat satellites to conduct a nationwide health impact assessment that estimated increased green vegetation impact on all-cause mortality among adults 65 and older in 35 large US metropolitan areas. The study period focused on three distinct time periods across a 20-year span: 2000, 2010, and 2019. Using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), a widely used metric that estimates the quantity of green vegetation, the researchers calculated that 34,080-38,187 elderly deaths — or about 15 to 20 deaths per 10,000 seniors — could have been prevented between 2000-2019 with a 0.1 increase in NDVI across all 35 metropolitan areas.

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