WaPo: Everyone says trees are good for us. This scientist wants to prove it.

Image via The Washington Post.

From The Washington Post:

Aruni Bhatnagar looked up.

“This tree right here, it’s got a lot of good leaves so you can stick a lot of air pollutants in it,” Bhatnagar, a cardiology researcher, said as he gestured toward a magnolia tree on the U.S. Capitol grounds.

Bhatnagar, silver haired and wearing a black turtleneck, was in D.C. for the World Forum on Urban Forests to speak about his $15 million Green Heart Louisville project — an initiative aimed at showing a causal connection between greenness and human health, and a potential model for U.S. cities looking to measure the effects of their tree planting.

In 2018, Bhatnagar, a University of Louisville medical school professor, decided that he wanted to “do something” about air pollution in Louisville, which has repeatedly earned failing grades for air quality from the American Lung Association. His contribution, he decided, would be to find the connection between trees and better heart health using the gold standard for evidence: clinical trials.

“The idea is to learn to examine everything, no matter how obvious they may seem,” he says.