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ALICE IN VIRGINIA ASKS:
My neighbors are cleaning up their lawn and yard for spring. They keep things tidy and nice looking, but also the noise of their leaf blower is driving me … to write you a question. Are there dangers of leaf blowers other than noise pollution? What are the alternatives? I hear some towns have leaf blower bans, and I am officially interested!
Tell Congress: Save Cleaner Energy to Protect Our Children
MOM DETECTIVE ANSWERS:
Hi, Alice. Yes, there are indeed dangers of leaf blowers other than noise pollution. They’re super unpleasant to listen to, and noise can harm our hearing and our health. To add insult to noisy injury are the toxic fumes and air pollution the leaf blowers create.
Children and the workers operating the leaf blowers all day every day are most at risk to the harms of leaf blowers’ toxic fumes and noise pollution. And people like you are cluing in. As a result, there are now plenty of groups devoted to banning blowers. Hundreds of towns across the United States have managed to restrict or ban leaf blowers, including some big ones, like Washington, DC. Businesses or individuals that use gasoline-powered leaf blowers there are subject to fines of up to $500 for each offense!
To get you started on your own anti-leaf blower journey, here’s some more information about the health hazards associated with them plus a variety of better options and solutions.
Toxic fumes and air pollution
Leaf blowers tend to have something called a two-stroke engine, which is both dirtier and less fuel-efficient than most modern cars. I’m no engine expert, but my understanding after reading about them is that these engines mix together gasoline and oil in their combustion chamber and emit as much as one-third of this fuel combination as an unburned aerosol. According to Mt. Sinai Institute for Exposomic Research, 30% of the gas and oil that gas leaf blowers use is unburned and released directly to the atmosphere. These emissions include carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, formaldehyde, benzene, hydrocarbons, and particulate matter. These can impact respiratory health and increase asthma risk and severity, and are also associated with heart disease, dementia, autism, and cancer, among other health concerns.
Gas leaf blower emissions also impact our health indirectly as they accelerate climate change. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) estimates that operating a gas leaf blower for one hour releases emissions equivalent to driving a car for 15 hours or 1,100 miles. Cars do have emission standards, but gas-powered blowers? Not so much.
If you deep dive into research on leaf blowers, you will run into another fun fact: they create 200-mile-an-hour winds! This massive force creates wind storms, essentially, as they blast leaves. The clouds they create are a pretty substantial source of air pollutants: they can contain dust, pollen, mold, pesticide residue, heavy metals, and much more—all flying around the air we breathe—frequently through our open windows. Those extremely strong winds can also harm lawns and gardens as they “clean” them of leaves, damaging soil, disturbing habitats of birds, small mammals, beneficial insects, and microbes.
Noise pollution
Since you specifically asked about disturbing noise, have you ever looked closely at your neighbors or a yard crew? Some of them wear ear plugs as they work, if they know to, and with good reason. The noise you can’t stand listening to in your home can absolutely harm hearing, the degree to which depends on decibel levels.
The World Health Organization recommends general daytime outdoor noise levels of 55 dB or less, but Mt. Sinai says some manufacturers estimate noise exposure from gas leaf blowers for bystanders as far as 50 feet away at around 70 dB. Those most at risk to the noise harms of leaf blowers are groundskeepers, not you or me, owing to repeated exposure over time. Interestingly, noise can also contribute to health harms that have nothing to do with hearing, like cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, stress, and preterm birth after exposure to excessive noise during pregnancy. Noise from leaf blowers at schools can even impair kids’ academic performance!
There are solutions
All of the above sounds bad. And it is. But there are a wide variety of solutions available. It can be easy to make changes at home, on your own lawn, in your own kingdom so to speak. But as you aptly point out, Alice, we live in a world with other people. You may never use a gas leaf blower on your own piece of the pie, but just next door, your neighbor is busily blowing their 200 mph dust piles directly into your open windows. This is why town bans are, as you note, so enticing. We all share air and a ban is more likely to safeguard clean air than you picking up a rake. That said, here are some ideas, including bans and rakes:
- Ban gas powered leaf blowers: Do what it takes to get a ban where you live. Join forces with neighbors and ask your local officials to join other municipalities in banning or restricting gas leaf blowers.
- Leave the leaves: Why do people blow leaves? There are entire organizations devoted to the benefits of leaving leaves where they fall. A brief overview: In the winter, fallen leaves provide shelter for a wide variety of beneficial garden critters. All year round, as they break down, they provide nutrients to soil and plants alike.
- Grab a rake: If you want to move leaves around, these effective tools require elbow grease, but nothing’s quieter, and they’re perfectly fume- and wind-storm-free for the earth and your garden. (Just don’t buy a plastic one!) Raked leaves can be used as mulch anywhere you need some.
- Choose electric blowers: If you want to blow leaves, opt for corded or battery operated leaf blowers. They can still blow dust and disturb habitat, but without air-polluting gas emissions.
- Hire an “eco” lawn care company: Not everyone does their own yardwork. If you rely on outside help, ask your current crew to use electric leaf blowers, or hire a company already using them.
Alice, I hope this helps you on a path to more silence and less fumes. It’s not just leaf blowers, of course. Gas-powered lawn equipment abounds! As long as you’re considering leaf blowers, I hope you will also look into less-polluting alternatives for your lawn mower, weed whacker, trimmers, and more.