Researchers in Switzerland have revealed that people who live in high-rise flats stand the chance of living a longer and healthier life that those living below.
The Swiss experts at the University of Bern are now of the belief that the higher the floor you live on, the greater your life expectancy.
The experts put the chances of dying from serious lung disease at 40 percent greater among residents who lived on the ground floor compared to those with a flat on the eighth floor or above.
For heart disease, the mortality rate is put at 35 percent greater among those at ground level, while for lung cancer, the risk of death increased by 22 percent.
However, the only type of death associated with living in higher floors is suicide which is on the increase but inhabitants of ground floor are about 60 percent less likely to kill themselves by jumping.
The research was made from a study of more than 1.5 million people living in buildings with four or more floors, and findings published by the European Journal of Epidemiology.
With housing being recognized as a major influence on health, researchers inquired to investigate the rate of death.
It’s also estimated that one in six European dwellings is located in a high-rise building. In the UK, many of these tower blocks sprung up in the sixties and seventies, often in deprived areas.
But modern versions tend to be aimed at the luxury end of the market where rents rise in accordance with the level flats are situated on.
“The reputation of high-rise housing as unpleasant and unhealthy habitats that isolate people from their social environment and increase crime continues to the present,” the researchers also said in a report.
SOURCE: Guardian
By Samuel Mayowa
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