A simple venture into the majestic outdoors, this saves your life. The idea of walking outside taking in all your surroundings and breathing the natural air is viewed as a pointless activity. Many have more important things to do like work, catching up on the latest episode of an internationally loved sitcom or ranking up on a first person shooter. This lack of interest of nature in our modern society is killing over 4.3 million people a year. Something that most people don’t realise is that by staying indoors the majority of the time they experience a lack of air quality. Mainly due to factors like open fires and stoves amongst other household appliances that produce high levels of indoor air pollution. Over 3 billion people worldwide experience this lack of air quality and the majority are women and young children as they tend to spend more time indoors. Europe is a key continent that is subjected to this, as 90% of people in Europe spend most their free time indoors. How shocking to realise. Locally, there are many beautiful places to walk in this rural area. Beautiful landscapes that surround us are like the lost city of Shangri-La. This is because these places have been lost in society, hidden away from mankind because we no longer show any interest or care in finding them. Many figures support this idea, children from the 1970s used to spend on average 2 hours a day outside and 9 hours on a weekend whereas now the figures have dropped greatly to 1 hour a day outside and 4.5 hours on a weekend. This is something that we all need to take into consideration as many risks are caused by spending too much time indoors and most don’t realise what we put our bodies through. These are really important impacts and these figures just show the physical harm of being indoors too much. There is another side to it which involves a lack of community as people are too enclosed in their own worlds to realise that this community we fight to protect isn’t really a community. The outdoors is a way to bring together a community and be healthy but also a way to relax from societies demands and relieve yourself of stress. Even just for a second it’ll do you a world of good. Sam Plumpton - Therfield School 6th form