Trees Provide Health Boost to Humans By Sam Lehman | Jan 17,
2013 12:03 PM EST A new study reinforces the belief that
exposure to a natural environment with lots of trees keeps a
person healthy. A study conducted by Geoffrey Donovan, a
research forester at the Forest Service's Pacific Northwest
Research Station, and his colleagues found how the presence of
tress affects a person's health in a good way. The loss of 100
million trees in the eastern and mid-western parts of the United
States provided a good opportunity to study the impact of a
major change in the natural environment on human health. After
collecting and analyzing data from 15 countries of 18 years, it
was found that Americans who live in areas that were infected by
insects that kills trees saw 15,000 deaths from cardiovascular
diseases and 6,000 more from respiratory illness compared to
people who lived in places that had trees. "There's a natural
tendency to see our findings and conclude that, surely, the
higher mortality rates are because of s