Welcome to 2009

Welcome to 2009, and welcome back to the Healthy Turtle. After two weeks of family, friends, and copious amounts of food, I wanted to catch you up on some interesting health-related tidbits that you have may have missed amidst the feasting and celebrating:

Late last year, The USA Today published a fascinating project called "The Smokestack Effect." The project charted the air quality around 128,000 schools in the US by matching school locations with information from the EPA. The project also tested air quality at numerous schools with assistance from faculty right here at Maryland SPH (among others).

The results were alarming; to see for yourself, visit this site and put in your location to see what's in the air. For more information about their methodology, visit here.

With a New Year comes New Year's resolutions, fresh commitments to live and eat better (for our part, the Healthy Turtle is promising not to race anymore hares this year). To help keep your resolutions, Well-Blog at the New York Times has a list of healthy and cheap foods. The APHA's twitter page has ten tips for a healthy new year. The ERC and the SPH have winter term hours, just in case you're around campus and are looking to get some exercise.

As for the Healthy Turtle blog, be on the look out for more features on research, conversations on health topics, and other such things in the coming year.