Green spaces – trees, shrubs and grasses – can improve air quality and may lower heart disease deaths, according to preliminary research to be presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2020.
Green spaces – trees, shrubs and grasses – can improve air quality and may lower heart disease deaths, according to preliminary research to be presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2020. The meeting will be held virtually, Friday, November 13 - Tuesday, November 17, 2020, and is a premier global exchange of the latest scientific advancements, research and evidence-based clinical practice updates in cardiovascular science for health care worldwide.
“We found that both increased greenness and increased air quality were associated with fewer deaths from heart disease,” said William Aitken, M.D., a cardiology fellow with the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and UM/Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida.
Greenness is a measure of vegetative presence (trees, shrubs, grass) often assessed by NASA imaging of the Earth and other methods. Here, researchers used the Normalized Difference Vegetative Index (NDVI), which measures wavelengths of visible and near-infrared sunlight reflected from the Earth’s surface via NASA satellite imagery. A higher index corresponds to more healthy vegetation, as chlorophyll typically absorbs visible light and reflects near-infrared light.riability from decade to decade,” Bates said.
Read more at: American Heart Association
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