Considering that Stephen does not get all of his exercise through blogging and Metrocard-swiping, maybe he should be writing this post. But he also has a job -- and a long overdue post on attending ASHRAE in Orlando; come on, dude -- and so I guess I'll drag my wheezing, emaciated form into the breach and cover the interesting case of Bushwick's Green Fitness Studio. While it's not pursuing any sort of third-part certification, and thus can't objectively be placed in some sort of continuum of greener-to-less-green gyms, the green specs on the Green Fitness Studio's website certainly suggest that this gym is a good deal greener than the power-guzzling gym your author is still paying membership dues to.

Well, this is kind of surprising. Last week's post on the continued use -- and impending legislation to curtail said use -- of mega-nasty heating sludge Number Six heating oil pinpointed upper Manhattan and the South Bronx as the neighborhoods in which ol' Number Six was most commonly used. And while that's still true, the Downtown Express reports that six buildings in Battery Park City, Manhattan's most ostentatiously green residential neighborhood, are using Number Four or Number Six oil to heat their buildings. This isn't in violation of BPC's vaunted green building code (and isn't mentioned in LEED's guidelines, either), mostly because it seems like no one really thought about it until recently. Presumably, that's going to be changing soon.

If you've been on the street in New York City -- and it's doubtful you're able to avoid that, unless you use FreshDirect more than I do -- then you've seen the black smoke belching, all Dickensian and foul-smelling and just-plain-awful-looking, from the chimneys of some of the city's bigger buildings. The likelihood is that you've breathed it in, too. And while it would certainly be a great "whodathunk" story if we could tell you that somehow all that dense black smoke was good for you, this is one of those instances where the intuitive conclusion happens to be the right one -- according to a new study by New York University School of Law's Institute for Policy Integrity, the soot-laden black smoke that is the main byproduct (along with heat) from so-called Number Four and Number Six Heating Oil is every bit as bad for you as it looks.