Visiting natural environments even for a short time can be beneficial for one's health. Image via Wikipedia
After spending some time this weekend in my garden, lounging in the dappled sunlight, it reminded me just how powerful nature is to rejuvenate and heal both physically and emotionally.
Many studies show that after stressful or concentration-demanding situations, people recover faster and better in natural environments than in urban settings. Blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension and the level of “stress hormones” all decrease faster in natural settings. Depression, anger and aggressiveness are reduced in green environments and ADHD symptoms in children reduce when they play in green settings.
Great editorial about the effects of noise pollution on people in populated areas, and from a source who would know; Burma, or Myanmar, a country with over 55 million people crammed into a relatively small space:
The Manipur Pollution Control Board has been making efforts to lessen pollution in this fast growing city of ours. However one dimension of pollution seems to be neglected comparatively speaking, and that is noise pollution. Most citizens are unaware that prolonged exposure to noise pollution can lead to deafness or hearing impairment.
To get a clearer picture of the menace of noise pollution let us get down to a few facts. Noise is measured by its loudness and the technical measuring unit is decibel (dB).
The quietness we get in a library is surprisingly measured at 30 dB. Perhaps the flipping of pages are responsible for that. The quietness in a garden, far from the madding crowd, is slightly higher.
It is not known how many decibles are registered by a nagging wife. But it is bound to make a few neighbours raise their eyebrows and plead for calm. However Rip Van Winkle left his wife and slept in quiet and solitude for twenty years.
On the other hand a pair of young lovers will of course, make sure that at least sound does not betray their presence.
City traffic, heard from inside a car is measured at 85 dB. A police whistle is measured above 90 dB. The level at which sustained exposure may result in hearing loss is between 90-95 dB.
What is of concern, particularly related to our children, is that even short term exposure to excessive loudness can cause permanent damage.
I have moved from a couple of different apartments because of the associated noise pollution from busy streets or freeway noises, and I can’t work with super loud music on (although a little white noise is actually useful for me).
What are some of the biggest noise polluters where you live?
South Lake Union, Seattle, WA. Image by tedeytan via Flickr
I originally wrote this essay as a response to the daily prompt at StoryPraxis, a very cool project that encourages people to write for just ten minutes a day. The particular prompt inspired me to write about my current hometown, Seattle, and how enriching its natural environment is. For example, I probably have one of the prettiest commutes in the United States. You can read the original post here.
Seattle is probably the prettiest city to have to commute through. You drive over lakes, over sounds, past mountains, past forests. You cross microclimates, and probably experience at least three kinds of weather in 20 minutes or less.
Cresting over one of the many hills the Olympics suddenly burst out onto the horizon in front of you, the bright morning sun making the snow caps shine just below the cloud layer so it looks like a clear, sunshine day “over there.” The sky above you is filled with gray clouds, but today they are more textured than a gray blanket, allowing the light to bounce off creating interesting shapes and textures.
Each neighborhood you pass is very distinct, either due to geographical divisions like water or hills, or more cultural markers like Buddhist prayer flags mixed with solar panels on 1950s bungalows which two blogs later transform into modern condos with Priuses parked out front.
Coming up over the I-5 bridge you’re now high above the city, the commercial waterways 100s of feet below. From here you can see almost all of Seattle’s signature neighborhoods in a 360 degree view – University district, Wallingford, Fremont, Ballard, Queen Anne, South Lake Union, Downtown, Capitol Hill. You see the Olympics on your right, and now the sun is reaching its fingers over the Cascades on your left, injecting the gray clouds with pink and purple, adding bursts of color to the gray sky above.
The freeway has ivy and trees growing over the sides, threatening to spill onto the roadway. You merge onto one of the eastbound bridges, and suddenly you’re cresting over a giant lake, now so close to the water you’re almost floating. To your right off in the distance across the water is Mt. Rainier, shooting its head above the clouds, fighting to keep them from swallowing it whole. A great blue heron casually floats over the morning commuters, and a bald eagle stands vigil on top of one of the lamp posts dotting the bridge.
You pull off your exit, the trees and shrubs now practically enfolding the off ramp. On a sunny day they call to you, “come climb in my branches, come run through my meadow fields.” It’s good that it’s so damp and gray today, or you’d never get to work. The tulips and crocus popping up in the road dividers, almost weed-like in their determination to grow anywhere and everywhere, add some color now that the sun has risen above the clouds, taking the pink streaks with it.
You’re sad to go inside, but know you’ll have a literal birds-eye view into the trees growing just across the street of your office building.
You’re thankful to have one of the most beautiful commutes in the world, and just sad you have to experience it all from a car.
Since my day job is looking at how messages are spread through social media, it’s hard to miss some of the interesting ways corporations are trying to tap into it. There is an interesting trend of companies supporting global campaigns for water rights, raising money for earthquake victims, or other humanity efforts. Some people just see it as corporations trying to make themselves look nicer, and in some ways that’s probably right, yet maybe despite their marketing efforts, or on top off, they’re also promoting community, group involvement, and making a change.
For example, Levi’s recently launched a game that also supports water rights around the world. Sure it’s raising awareness about Levi’s, but it also supports the efforts of clean drinking water, and play!
Through the initiative, Levi’s plans to donate $250,000 to Water.org to fund programs that will provide at least 200 million liters of water to the more than 1 billion people who lack access to potable sources. The point of the game goes beyond Levi’s largesse, however. Participants also help telegraph word of the water crisis while reexamining their own use of the precious commodity. (Pledging to wash your jeans less and take shorter showers is another challenge.
I say, go play the game, and when the boss comes by, explain it’s for humanitarian reasons. She’ll buy it, really! 🙂
Happy New Year! Time for New Year’s resolutions. Mine? To eat more healthy. And apparently so it is for these guys, as well as help the environment. Not to sound like my dad here, but I was doing this before it was cool!:
There’s a new shift in the politics of food, not quite a movement yet, more of an eco-culinary frisson. But it may have staying power; the signs and portents are there. Vegans, freegans, locavores — meet the invasivores.
I’m far from home right now, and feeling it. I could use a touch of home…and for some reason honey seems very homey to me. Especially when it’s made at home! Don’t laugh, urban bee-keeping is becoming a big thing, as part of the local-vore, grow-your-own-food movement.
Beekeeping classes from Medina, Ohio, to the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and New York are seeing an unexpected shift in enrollment. Numbers are way up as thousands of novices take up the hobby. And who are these new beekeepers? Increasingly, they’re women.
“The surge has really been with younger, urban women,” explains longtime instructor Kim Flottum, who teaches beekeeping in Medina.
Flottum estimates that there are about 100,000 backyard beekeepers across the United States. Exact numbers are hard to pin down. But subscriptions to the publication Bee Culture are on the rise. And when Flottum published a how-to book — An Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Keeping Bees in Your Yard and Garden — 60,000 people snapped up copies. The book is aimed at making the hobby easier and using more lightweight equipment.
The world’s amphibians are under attack from a deadly fungus, which threatens to wipe out a third of all species. It’s the worst extinction crisis since the dinosaurs were wiped off the planet so I’m on a mission to find out how we can save them.
Not only did she fall in love with amphibians, she fell in love with sloths. And apparently the world did too!
The world’s gone bonkers for sloths. It seems my little video featuring the sleepy residents of the world’s only sloth orphanage is the equivalent of grade A cute crack for millions of LOL squee loving junkies. It’s been watched by nearly 2 million people around the world from Greece (one of the first countries where the clip went viral – but then they needed a laugh that week what with the small matter of total economic meltdown) to Guam (66 Guamians have now watched which is presumably the entire population).
The sloths are now more famous than Jesus having been featured in Entertainment Weekly,The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, the Approval Matrix in the New York magazine and on CNN all in the space of a week. Everyone is jumping on the sloth bandwagon – I hear that Madonna is adopting one, Jordan is attempting to marry one and Obama is considering using the sloths to help negotiate a peace agreement with North Korea.
Boing Boing is an awesome filter for culture and science enrichment! Heck the whole site is enriching. Once again they deliver, with this choice nugget from Norway: rural Norwegian homes whose roofs have been given over to the traditional turf — and even small forests.
Image from Amusing Planet
Turf roofs in Norway are a tradition and you will see them everywhere. Roofs in Scandinavia have probably been covered with birch bark and sod since prehistory. During the Viking and Middle Ages most houses had sod roofs. In rural areas sod roofs were almost universal until the beginning of the 18th century. Tile roofs, which appeared much earlier in towns and on rural manors, gradually superseded sod roofs except in remote inland areas during the 19th century. Corrugated iron and other industrial materials also became a threat to ancient traditions. But just before extinction, the national romantics proclaimed a revival of vernacular traditions, including sod roofs. A new market was opened by the demand for mountain lodges and holiday homes. At the same time, open air museums and the preservation movement created a reservation for ancient building traditions. From these reservations, sod roofs have begun to reappear as an alternative to modern materials.Every year, since 2000, an award is also given to the best green roof project…
As anyone living in the gray, wet Pacific Northwest knows, there is something mentally stimulating and rejuvenating to being able to step outside and get a whiff of fresh air, even if it means getting a bit soggy in the process. Now, research has proven just how beneficial it is for mental health:
Hartig and colleagues suggest that being stuck indoors on vacation can limit mental recuperation. On the other hand, when able to roam outdoors, we can exert ourselves at a favourite sport or simply linger in the park. Psychologically, beautiful scenery can distract us from our troubles, help us forget our normal stressful environments and reconnect us to nature.
Mental Flowers 