Newborns living near parks are healthier, here' why

Ever wondered why children are big tree-huggers? Looks like they do have a connection with nature, after all! Babies born into homes near to parks or places with trees tend to be healthier. A new study suggests that babies born to mothers who live near newly planted trees are more likely to have healthier birth outcomes.

Researchers at Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health found that proximity to trees, especially newly planted ones is linked to better health outcomes in newborns. Though other factors like education, income, and body mass index of the families influence this link, the association is beyond that. The findings published in the journal Science of The Total Environment suggest that newborns living next to trees have a higher birth weight and a lower risk of preterm or small-for-gestational-age births.

To understand how trees might impact families, the researchers looked at more than 36,000 trees planted in Portland, Oregon between 1990 and 2020, and examined how many new trees were planted within 100 meters of a mother’s address in the decade before the birth.
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Each tree planted nearby was associated with a 2.3-gram increase in birth weight, the researchers said. While that number may seem small, the cumulative impact was significant.

“Although there is benefit from well-established trees, we’re finding that newly planted trees are also associated with healthy birth weight. This is another data point showing that planting trees is a relatively easy and low-cost way to improve public health from the earliest stages of a life,” senior author Yvonne Michael, ScD, a professor and interim chair in the Dornsife School of Public Health, said in a statement.

The study found that living within 100 meters of at least 10 trees was associated with about a 50-gram increase in birthweight.

“Fifty grams may not seem like a lot, but if every baby in our sample gained 50 grams at birth, that means 642 fewer babies considered small for gestational age, and at higher risk for worse development later in life,” Michael added noting that there were 2,879 babies with that diagnosis in the study.

Stress plays a huge role in increasing the likelihood of delivering a baby preterm and poor health outcomes later in life.

“It’s rare to have detailed information on large-scale tree plantings for research. Existing tree cover is often closely tied to factors like income, education, and race, making it difficult to fully account for other possible explanations when studying birth outcomes. By focusing on newly planted trees, we were able to reduce the bias, essentially treating it as a natural experiment. Plus, we observed the improvements in birth outcomes after trees were planted, establishing temporal order,” Michael added.