This post is a roundup of news about the ongoing shift away from the dirtiest machinery still in legal use, gas-powered leaf blowers. The change is happening, and it is speeding up.
Over the past seven years, the District of Columbia has set a standard for the nation by considering, approving, and now successfully implementing a complete ban on the sale or use of this destructive machinery. My wife, Deb, and I have been part of a D.C. citizens group working on this change. One of our watchwords has been “accelerating the inevitable,” as with previous limits on smoking or dangerous pesticides like DDT.
Sooner or later, we’ll make these changes. So let’s do it sooner.
This week, in a very good story in theWashington Post, Rachel Kurzius, who has covered the D.C. evolution of this issue, writes about it on the national scale. She says: “First, let’s deal with gas-powered leaf blowers, which are viewed about as favorably these days as smoking indoors.”
It’s an apt comparison, with the added twist that these yard machines amount to “second-hand smoke” in two distinct ways.
—One is the literal smoke and fumes from two-stroke engines. They incompletely burn a slurry of gasoline and oil, and release much of the remainder as carcinogenic aerosols and smog-forming pollutants. More details from the California Air Resources Board in a PDF here.
—The other is their uniquely penetrating noise, which affects bystanders over very large areas, and of course is most damaging to the people closest to the noise source. In big cities and suburbs these are typically low-wage hired crews, unlikely to have long-term insurance coverage for the damage done to their lungs and ears. An audiologist wrote eloquently about the despair he feels every time he sees a crew using these machines, as quoted here. For more about why gas-powered blower noise carries so far, start with this testimony from public-health expert Jamie Banks.
“Here’s the thing about tipping points,” Peter Leyden wrote in an article I cited recently. He continued:
When they happen, they happen fast… Some new trend will slowly grow in popularity on the fringes of society and once it gets enough exposure then — boom — everyone does it.
Some examples of everyone doing it:
Sierra magazine.
From the writer Michael Shapiro, a very good article in Sierra magazine on the significance of the D.C. legislation. Sample:
Retired psychotherapist and poet Larry Robinson says that the damage inflicted by leaf blowers goes beyond physical, that "the soul experiences mechanical sounds as an assault." The sound from gas blowers "overwhelms all other sounds," he says, "including music, conversation, the wind through the trees, or the songs of birds."
More than 100 US cities and towns have banned or restricted leaf blowers…
The transition is accelerating as manufacturers shift production toward electric machines. Makita, a Japanese power tool manufacturer, announced last March that it ceased production "of all gas-powered equipment worldwide . . . in response to the heightened awareness of global environmental issues."
More on the WaPo piece.
Let’s go back to the new piece by Rachel Kurzius. She writes:
According to tool-manufacturer Stanley, Black & Decker, 85 percent of personal-use blowers on the market now are electric. “That’s been pretty steady over the last five years,” says Christine Potter, president of the company’s outdoor business unit….
There are more than 200 jurisdictions across the country that have some law governing leaf blower use, says Jamie Banks, president of Quiet Communities, a nonprofit group focused on reducing noise and pollution...
In D.C., where gas blowers were banned in 2018 with a three-year phase-in period, people who still use them can face a $500 fine.
As I’ve noted before, the law’s implementation in D.C. deserves study as a model for other jurisdictions:
—It got unanimous legislative support, thanks to leadership by Councilmember Mary Cheh. It offered multi-year advance notification to lawn-care companies, in mailings, newsletters, and updates from regulatory agencies. It provided low-cost loans and trade-in subsidies for D.C.-based lawn companies, notably from DCSEU, the District’s Sustainable Energy Utility. And once it took effect, at the start of 2022, it relied on a simple and effective violation-reporting system.
If you read Kurzius’s piece, please be sure to check out the comments. As of the moment, they are at least ten-to-one enthusiastic about a shift away from gas-powered blowers. Even five years ago, they would mainly have been been negative, from people scoffing, “Don’t you have anything better to worry about?”
Things change slowly, and then fast.
From the East Coast to the West, …
—This week, there was a strong article in NJ.Com from Bill Brazell. The original article is here; a non-paywalled blog version is here. Sample:
It’s the gas-powered leaf blower’s incomplete combustion that creates this immense pollution. The engine’s lubricating oils contaminate the fuel-air mixture as it burns, and only some of the fuel ends up being used to move leaves.
The rest comes out as carbon monoxide, unburnt carbon particles and benzene. Benzene can cause two forms of leukemia, as well as multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. How much benze