Residential Exposure to Urban Trees and Medication Sales for Mood Disorders and Cardiovascular Disease in Brussels, Belgium: An Ecological Study

作者：Dengkai Chi, Raf Aerts, An Van Nieuwenhuyse, Mariska Bauwelinck, Claire Demoury, Michelle Plusquin, Tim S. Nawrot, Lídia Casas, Ben Somers · 发表于：Environmental Health Perspectives · 年份：2022 · DOI：10.1289/ehp9924 · 被引用次数：48 · 研究领域：Urban Green Space and Health、Tree-ring climate responses、Remote Sensing in Agriculture

Background: The available evidence for positive associations between urban trees and human health is mixed, partly because the assessment of exposure to trees is often imprecise because of, for instance, exclusion of trees in private areas and the lack of three-dimensional (3D) exposure indicators (e.g., crown volume). Objectives: We aimed to quantify all trees and relevant 3D structural traits in Brussels (Belgium) and to investigate associations between the number of trees, tree traits, and sales of medication commonly prescribed for mood disorders and cardiovascular disease. Methods: We developed a workflow to automatically isolate all individual trees from airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data collected in 2012. Trait data were subsequently extracted for 309,757 trees in 604 census tracts. We used the average annual age-standardized rate of medication sales in Brussels for the period 2006 to 2014, calculated from reimbursement information on medication prescribed to adults (19–64 years of age). The medication sales data were provided by sex at the census tract level. Generalized log-linear models were used to investigate associations between the number of trees, the crown volume, tree structural variation, and medication sales. Models were run separately for mood disorder and cardiovascular medication and for men and women. All models were adjusted for indicators of area-level socioeconomic status. Results: Single-factor models showed that higher stem densitie...