In fact, my second-last slide addressed that.
First, I am convinced of the importance of a city's influence on our quality of life. In Canada, as in most countries, we have three levels of government: municipal, provincial and federal. I believe the municipal world influences our way of life the most. In fact, in one city, the disease and mortality rates can be completely different from one neighbourhood to another based on the environment. If laws, regulations or practices are changed in those areas, everything changes.
Why does a Swiss person in Geneva have one tenth of the heart disease risk of a Russian person in Moscow? If you bring a one-day-old Russian baby to Geneva and you bring a one-day-old Swiss baby to Moscow, the statistics will be the opposite. Many studies in the world show that if twins live in different environments, the environment will have more influence than genetics. Okinawa, in Japan, is a city famous for its 100-year-old residents. People live well into old age; many of them live 100 years. The descendants of the residents of Okinawa who emigrated to Hawaii experienced a decrease in their life expectancy and an increase in their cardiovascular mortality rate. The descendants of the residents of Okinawa who went to Los Angeles had the same rates as Americans.
Consequently, the environment has a huge influence, even for people who have the same genes. I think that, locally, it's what influences us directly. In nice cities like Portland, or some cities in Germany whose names I forget, efforts have been made. These effects are measured directly.
The three levels of government must act consistently if we want a better quality of life in cities. In fact, we want to spend less on health care. Excess morbidity due to pollution costs us $9 billion a year. That is an impressive number. We need to start thinking about that.
I'll say again that in 1830, heart diseases were rare. We caused them. Now, we need to reflect on this. We don't want to lose our quality of life, our means, our energy, our comfort or anything else, but we can be more efficient. We can do it that way. We can say we're fortunate to live in Canada, because we have everything. It's a matter of balancing choices. We need to look to the future with this in mind.
I'll come back to eradicating food nano-aggressors. It's legislation that, in many ways, concerns the federal government. There are airborne nano-aggressors, those we emit and those we regulate. Finally, there are green environments. In an environment with many trees, as was mentioned, there is a real decrease in the cardiovascular mortality rate and, especially, a reduction in the gap between the rich and the poor. That is what struck me most. I don't know of any medication that decreases socioeconomic inequalities for diseases as much as a green environment. In my opinion, the study published in The Lancet by Richard Mitchell from the University of Glasgow is very important, because it has 40 million subjects.
That about summarizes my response to that subject.