On the front page of Chronicle in Reading, The Green Councillor, Rob White reported to have done over 400 case studies for residents etc. Very hard working Rob. Well done.
If you are out and about in Caversham, don't forget www.beatthestreet.co.uk collect points for walking or cycling.
I walked 10 miles this morning and enjoyed a stop in Prospect Park today in Tilehurst. The www.rsme.co.uk local minature railway club there enjoyed a function with parents and children and so enjoyed waving at them on the trains.
It took me back to Brighton, my God Father was patron of Brighton and Hove Minature Railway there and he also made his own steam engine from stratch! It runs in the family - engineering...
Back in Caversham two residents have concerns about planning locally, so been researching and addressing their problems with the Council.
Proposed extra leisure facilities in local Meadows - will mean loss of valuable green spaces we are losing in Reading.
Nationally, items today in press:
UK reaps Swiss Banks windfall tax, Hunt backs CQC cover up and Turkey's EU membership big falters.
But the big question is: How Trees save our lives, below... item from US.
I love being Green.
Study: Trees save at least a life a year in each of 10 major U.S. cities
Next time you hug a city-dwelling tree, be sure to whisper quiet thanks for the lives it is helping to save.
Researchers recently calculated that urban forests help save one or more people from dying every year in each of 10 major cities studied.
Trees growing in cities help clean the air of fine particulate air pollution — soot, smoke, dust, dirt — that can lodge in human lungs and cause health problems. Trees clear 71 tons of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) from Atlanta’s air annually. And they suck up enough pollution to save seven or eight lives every year in New York City.
These are the findings of researchers with the U.S. Forest Service and Davey Institute, published in the journal Environmental Pollution [PDF]. They calculated the health and economic benefits of air-cleansing urban forests in 10 U.S. cities and found that trees save lives, reduce hospital visits, and reduce the number of days taken off work. They do that mainly by sucking pollutants out of the air. Economic benefits, mostly from reduced mortality, ranged from $1.1 million a year in Syracuse, N.Y., to $60.1 million a year in New York City.
Overall, the greatest effect of trees on reducing health impacts of PM2.5 occurred in New York due to its relatively large human population and the trees’ moderately high removal rate and reduction in pollution concentration. The greatest overall removal by trees was in Atlanta due to its relatively high percent tree cover and PM2.5 concentrations.
And these findings cover only the effects of cleaning up fine particulate pollution. The study didn’t investigate the economic and life-giving benefits of trees sucking up larger soot particles, ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, or other types of air pollution.
“This research clearly illustrates that America’s urban forests are critical capital investments helping produce clear air and water; reduce energy costs; and, making cities more livable,” Forest Service researcher Michael Rains said in the press release.
The study comes after some of the researchers’ Forest Service colleagues discovered a correlation between loss of trees and higher human death rates, which they described in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. As we told you last week, the scientists found that the more trees there are in an area, the less likely people there are to die.
More hugs for trees, please.
