Even though the EPA found that chlorpyrifos (trade name, Lorsban) harmful to people and banned it the new EPA has allowed its use. From NPR
THE NATURE FIX
Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative
By Florence Williams
Illustrated. 280 pp. W.W. Norton & Company. $26.95.
Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative
By Florence Williams
Illustrated. 280 pp. W.W. Norton & Company. $26.95.
Imagine a miracle drug that could ease many of the stresses of modern life — a combination mood enhancer and smart pill that might even encourage the remission of cancer. Now imagine that this cure-all was an old-fashioned folk remedy: Just take a hike in the woods or a walk in the park. No prescription necessary.
That’s the proposition of Florence Williams’s fascinating “The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative.” We suffer from an “epidemic dislocation from the outdoors,” Williams writes, and it’s destructive to our mental and physical health. The therapy is straightforward. “The more nature, the better you feel.”
You’ve probably heard a version of this before. Two centuries ago, the Romantics trumpeted the virtues of nature as the antidote to the viciousness of industrialization. In 1984, the biologist Edward O. Wilson put a scientific spin on the idea with his book “Biophilia,” which posited that humans possess an innate love of nature.
Wilson’s argument was persuasive, yet it was mostly an aspiration dressed up as a hypothesis. In the generation since, scientists have sought to confirm the biophilia hypothesis — and they’re starting to get results. As little as 15 minutes in the woods has been shown to reduce test subjects’ levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. Increase nature exposure to 45 minutes, and most individuals experience improvements in cognitive performance. There are society-scale benefits as well. Researchers in England have shown that access to green spaces reduces income-related mental health disparities.
It’s all very encouraging, but how exactly does nature have such an effect on people? To answer that question, Williams shadows researchers on three continents who are working on the frontiers of nature neuroscience.
Maybe it’s the forest smells that turn us on; aerosols present in evergreen forests act as mild sedatives while also stimulating respiration. Perhaps it’s the soundscape, since water and, especially, birdsong have been proven to improve mood and alertness. Nature’s benefits might be due to something as simple as the fact that natural landscapes are, literally, easy on the eyes. Many of nature’s patterns — raindrops hitting a pool of water or the arrangement of leaves — are organized as fractals, and the human retina moves in a fractal pattern while taking in a view. Such congruence creates alpha waves in the brains — the neural resonance of relaxation.
Williams, a contributing editor at Outside magazine, presents all of this with the zip of a trail runner covering a lot of ground sure-footedly. She’s got the pop-sci presentation down pat — breezy enough to draw in the lay reader, thorough enough to satisfy the expert. She gamely volunteers to be researchers’ human guinea pig, including wearing a portable EEG unit in the woods and looking like a “shriveled sea urchin.” (At times, though, Williams’s writing pops a little too much for my taste; describing Frederick Law Olmsted as a “badass nature guru” is pushing it.)
Fortunately, getting a dose of nature doesn’t have to be hard. Most people get a lot of benefit from city parks and as little as five hours a month does the trick.
Awe, which many people experience in nature, is, according to one study, associated with increased generosity toward other people. Maybe what we get out of nature is a sense of connection to the larger community of life. I know how that sounds: at best like an aspiration dressed up as a hypothesis, at worst like woolly-headed romanticism. But here’s the thing — science is on its way to proving it.