Effect of Residential Greenness and Nearby Parks on Respiratory and Allergic Diseases among Middle School Adolescents in a Chinese City

Linyan Li, Jaime E. Hart, Brent A. Coull, Shi-jie Cao, John D. Spengler and Gary Adamkiewicz
Additional contact information
Linyan Li: Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02215, USA
Jaime E. Hart: Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02215, USA
Brent A. Coull: Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA
Shi-jie Cao: Academy of Building Energy Efficiency, School of Civil Engineering, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China
John D. Spengler: Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02215, USA
Gary Adamkiewicz: Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02215, USA

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 6, 1-11

Abstract: Research on the health impacts of green environments has mainly been conducted in developed countries. Differences in the urban forms between China and Western countries make it essential to understand the role of greenspace in Chinese settings. From 2014 to 2015, middle school students ( n = 5643) in Suzhou, China were enrolled in a study on the health effect of residential greenness. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and distance to the nearest park were calculated for each home address. Logistic regression was performed to test associations between exposure and self-reported doctor diagnoses of asthma, pneumonia, rhinitis, and eczema, adjusting for important confounders. No statistically significant associations were observed for any seasonal NDVI-based measures. However, the proximity of the participants’ residences to the closest park showed an inverse relationship to reported symptoms. The odds ratios for the furthest quartile compared to the closest quartile based on the distance to the nearest park were 0.58 (95% CI: 0.35, 0.99), 0.70 (95% CI: 0.50, 0.96), 0.92 (95% CI: 0.74, 1.15), 0.97 (95% CI: 0.76, 1.24), 0.86 (95% CI: 0.68, 1.10) for current asthma, ever asthma, ever pneumonia, ever rhinitis, and ever eczema, respectively. These findings focused on a single Chinese city and suggest that exposure to natural vegetation in urban areas may affect health through various pathways.

Keywords: residential greenness; NDVI; distance to park; asthma; pneumonia; rhinitis; eczema (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/6/991/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/6/991/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:6:p:991-:d:215263

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().