Help Is On the Way In the War Against Noisy Leaf Blowers

HughPickens.com writes: Perry Stein writes in the Washington Post that the fight against noisy leaf blowers is gaining momentum, in part, because residents are framing it as a public health issue. Two-stroke engine leaf blowers mix fuel with oil and don't undergo a complete combustion, emitting a number of toxins, like carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide, which their operators inevitably inhale. Municipalities throughout the country have moved to ban them. "You find two-stroke engines in poorer countries because they're cheap," says James Fallows citing a 2004 National Institutes of Health study showing that two-stroke engines on two- and three-wheeled vehicles in Delhi, India, account for a significant amount of air pollution. "You don't find them in richer countries because they're so dirty and polluting." In Washington DC leaf blowers can't exceed 70 decibels as measured from 50 feet away. (A normal conversation is typically about 60 decibels.) Haskell Small, a composer and concert pianist who is helping to lead the leaf-blower battle in Wesley Heights, describes the sound as "piercing." "When I try to compose or write a letter, there is no way for me to listen to my inner voice, and the leaf blower blanks out all the harmonic combinations."

But help is on the way. A new generation of leaf blowers is more environmentally friendly as the emergence of battery-powered leaf blowers takes us closer to the Holy Grail of equipment that is both (1) powerful and (2) quiet. Fallows supports the notion of a kind of trade-in program, where loud, old leaf blowers are exchanged for the less offensive kind. Ted Rueter, founder of Noise Free America, facilitated one such scheme. In the heat of his front lawn dispute with his neighbor, he offered a solution. "If you agree to use them, I will buy you two new leaf blowers," Rueter told his neighbor. "The offer was accepted and the noise level in his front yard was restored to a peaceful level," says Lawrence Richards. "When it comes to the balancing act of protecting landscaping jobs while reducing noise and emissions, it helps that someone was willing to pay for progress."

Comments

Another inane Hugh Pickens submission.

[Anonymous Coward]

What a fucking inane submission. Why the fuck is this on Slashdot?!

Leave the goddamn leaves on the ground. Or if you really must collect them, just use a fucking rake.

Holy shit, this submission makes me pine for the days of Roland Piquepaille. At least his submissions had some relevance, no matter how small.

What's wong with a rake

[Anonymous Coward]

I already have an environmentally friendly, much much quieter leaf mover called a rake. And best of all it is cheap to own and maintain.

Re:What's wong with a rake

[AthanasiusKircher]

I already have an environmentally friendly, much much quieter leaf mover called a rake. And best of all it is cheap to own and maintain.

Exactly.

And if you have a lot of leaves, buy a cheap heavy tarp. Rake leaves onto tarp. Drag tarp to desired location to deposit leaves. Done.

Not only that, but it's exercise. I'm always amazed at the people who show up at the gym or go running around the neighborhood, but they don't take advantage of natural opportunities for exercise. Instead of buying the leaf blower, buy the rake. Instead of the riding mower or the "self-propelled" push mower, buy a decent reel mower (they are a lot better than they used to be) and run around the yard with it. Instead of buying the power edger, get the manual one and dig. Rather than the rototiller for your garden, dig it up and turn the soil with a shovel. A lot of times you get a decent workout while actually accomplishing something, and you frequently end up using different sets of muscles for different yard tasks, rather than having to come up with an artificial "routine" to try to keep your whole body fit.

And if you say, "But, but... my yard is too big for this sort of thing -- it would take me way too long to maintain it manually." Well, then have a smaller yard. Even if you have a large piece of property, install perennial flower beds, install ground covers that don't require cutting every week (and often excessive fertilizer and irrigation), plant some trees. If you're rich enough to own a large piece of property and pay people to keep it like a golf course, pay a landscape designer to make it lower maintenance and with greater variety than a giant lawn or whatever.

That's actually the real problem behind all the leaf blower noise -- Americans in the suburbs often have giant pieces of property with unnecessary huge lawns and unreasonable expectations that they be kept up continuously as if they were part of a golf course. Maybe we should attack the underlying problem -- like avoiding giant unneeded lawns or getting rid of this notion that any leaves on the ground are bad or "untidy" (they can actually be good fertilizer if they aren't excessive).

Quiet leaf removal option without fuel or batterie

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called a rake you lazy Americans!

Re:FWP

[kheldan]

The noise is annoying, yes, and the exhaust emissions are nasty, yes, those things could be addressed technologically. But those issues aren't the real problem with leaf blowers at all. In the debris on the ground, there are all sorts of things that should stay on the ground and not be stirred up by the equivalent of hurricane-force winds that come out of a leaf blower. This includes all sorts of microorganisms, mold spores, allergens, and toxins. Also they should not properly even be called 'leaf blowers', they should be referred to as 'debris blowers', because they're as often as not used to blow trash and dirt and everything but plant material around. They should be banned, they're a public health nuisance, far and away worse than they are noisome or noisy.

Re:FWP

[hackertourist]

Is it really too much to ask not to pollute the entire neighborhood with your noise? Especially when quieter, non-annoying alternatives are available?

It's either your freedom to annoy people, or everyone else's freedom from being disturbed.

I, for one am looking forward to quieter leaf blowers being mandated. And we're far from them being used once or twice a year. For several months every year, I have a whole brigade of them coming round once a week to clean up the municipal green areas around my house. This takes an entire day, making working at home impossible that day.