Fight Pollution Along Busy City Streets

Fighting pollution is a never-ending struggle in our day-to-day. Imagine you’re all dressed up for work early in the morning but you suddenly look haggard after fighting your way through traffic and the accompanying smoke from other vehicles as you step out of your car and make your way to school or work. Pollution will always be a part of city life. How unfortunate it may seem but is actually our fault.

Now, local governments are doing their best in lining city streets with trees to reduce pollution levels and make the air cleaner and healthier for the people to breathe. Even through this simple measure, the air in major thoroughfares becomes cleaner. It may be baby steps to healthier living but better to have this than nothing at all.

Trees need to be compatible with their environment to maximize their ability to survive and influence urban air quality, a new study has suggested.

Based on the findings, a team of Filipino scientists has come up with a “menu” identifying which species can withstand the air quality in seven of Metro Manila’s busiest thoroughfares: Edsa, Ortigas Avenue, Roxas Boulevard, Taft Avenue, Pasay Road, C3 and C5 Road.

The list was the product of a yearlong study which ended last year and looked at 47 tree species found on major roads. Of this number, 18 species were native or indigenous to the country.

“There is a notion that if you plant a tree, it helps the environment. But you need to plant the right tree that can adopt to the environment that we have. If we plant the wrong tree in a particular environment, if it’s not tolerant, it may die,” said Dr. Glenn Sia Su, the main proponent of the research.

(Via: http://motioncars.inquirer.net/49357/study-lists-16-pollution-tolerant-trees-7-busiest-metro-roads)

With the help of science, we may be able to implement effective and efficient programs to help solve the pollution problem in most major cities. Local government units should keep this in mind when making local policies that address this issue to ensure their efforts don’t go down the drain.

The connection between trees, human health and well-being dates back millennia. The ancient Celts worshipped in sacred groves, believing the trees would protect them from physical and spiritual harm. In Hebrew and Christian scriptures a tree of life in the Garden of Eden imparted immortality. Potted conifers helped to cleanse the air inside tuberculosis sanatoriums of nineteenth century Europe.

In recent years, scientists studying urban forests have turned up links between exposure to green space and health benefits, including fewer deaths from heart disease and respiratory diseases, fewer hospitalizations, better infant birth weights and even less crime.

“We’ve had this intuitive understanding that nature is good for us. Now we’re backing it up on an empirical level,” said Geoffrey Donovan, a resource economist with the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station in Oregon.

Donovan and others are digging into the underlying science to understand the relationship between nature and health, a step they say will help guide the design of healthier cities and suburbs.

(Via: http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/2017/april/trees-science-and-the-goodness-of-green-space)

We can’t deny the positive correlation between green space and optimum health of the people. Numerous studies support such claims that human health improves in the presence of nature. While it is impossible to uproot ancient trees from the rainforest and transplant them in the city, we can still plant new ones that will be effective in reducing particulate matter in the air, and eventually reduce air pollution levels.

We may take it for granted now but over time we will realize how valuable these measures are when the world is overtaken by technology in the near future. The best time to plant trees is now. It takes a long time for them to grow, so we should no longer dilly-dally and just plant them along busy city streets while we still can and make the world still livable for the generations to come.

Other times, though, trees weren’t placed in strategic locations and become a bother to people and properties as they grow and mature. They may likewise get toppled down during calamities and affect the day-to-day of tens to thousands of people. To take care of this mess and remove the tree including its stump, call the pros for help http://www.allcleartree.com/stump-removal so they can get rid of the troublesome tree and stump safely and without affecting nearby properties. It may sound easy but tree removal requires careful planning especially if it is an urban location.

The post Fight Pollution Along Busy City Streets is courtesy of All Clear Tree Service's Blog

source http://www.allcleartree.com/removal/fight-pollution-along-busy-city-streets