Researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston, followed 108,630 U.S. women enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study between 2000 and 2008, comparing their mortality rates with the amount of vegetation around their homes.

The researchers also accounted for related risk factors such as age, socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity, and smoking behaviors. They concluded that subjects living in the greenest areas had a 12 percent lower mortality rate than those living in the least lush areas during the study period.

This article appears in the October 2017 issue of Natural Awakenings.