Association between Green Space Structure and the Prevalence of Asthma: A Case Study of Toronto

Abstract

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease that can be caused by various factors, such as asthma-related genes, lifestyle, and air pollution, and it can result in adverse impacts on asthmatics’ mental health and quality of life. Hence, asthma issues have been widely studied, mainly from demographic, socioeconomic, and genetic perspectives. Although it is becoming increasingly clear that asthma is likely influenced by green spaces, the underlying mechanisms are still unclear and inconsistent. Moreover, green space influences the prevalence of asthma concurrently in multiple ways, but most existing studies have explored only one pathway or a partial pathway, rather than the multi-pathways. Compared to greenness (measured by Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, tree density, etc.), green space structure—which has the potential to impact the concentration of air pollution and microbial diversity—is still less investigated in studies on the influence of green space on asthma. Given this research gap, this research took Toronto, Canada, as a case study to explore the two pathways between green space structure and the prevalence of asthma based on controlling the related covariates. Using regression analysis, it was found that green space structure can protect those aged 0–19 years from a high risk of developing asthma, and this direct protective effect can be enhanced by high tree diversity. For adults, green space structure does not influence the prevalence of asthma unless moderated by tree diversity (a measurement of the richness and diversity of trees). However, this impact was not found in adult females. Moreover, the hypothesis that green space structure influences the prevalence of asthma by reducing air pollution was not confirmed in this study, which can be attributed to a variety of causes.