Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 39 to 43. We need to attend to the tree loss because of the following tree benefits. Firstly, trees provide shade for homes, office buildings, parks and roadways, cooling surface temperatures. They also take in and evaporate water, (39) ______ cools the air around them. Secondly, trees absorb carbon and remove pollutants from the atmosphere. Trees also reduce energy costs by $4 billion a year, according to Nowak's study. “The shading of those trees on buildings (40) ______ your air conditioning costs. Take those trees away; now your buildings are heating up, you're running your air conditioning more, and you're burning more fuel from the power plants, so the pollution and emissions go up.” (41) ______, trees act as water filters, taking in dirty surface water and absorbing nitrogen and phosphorus into the soil. Last but not least, (42)______ studies have found connections between exposure to nature and better mental and physical health. Some hospitals have added tree views and plantings for patients as a result of these studies. Doctors are even prescribing walks in nature for children and families due to evidence that nature exposure lowers blood (43) ______ and stress hormones. And studies have associated living near green areas with lower death rates.
