Leaf Blowers: Part One

Evil has returned. This is not the kind of evil that steals bicycles or is named Sarah Palin. It is much worse. This evil threatens to give us cancer and tear our community apart by taking away the most basic necessity of a community, one's ability to talk and be heard. However, unlike a deadly airborne disease, this evil is much more detectable. You can hear its approach from far away, in fact, in most cases that is all you will be able to hear. Leaf blowers spare only the already deaf from their destruction.
Towards the end of last year I began a campaign to fight back against the leaf blowers. For my Environmental Economics class I looked at the “real cost” of leaf blowers. Leaf blowers affect us in two main areas: sound and health. To figure out the cost of noise I looked at how property values of homes next to airports are lower than the property value of a house in a similar neighborhood. Since the noise of an airplane taking off and landing is the same as a leaf blower (in many cases it is actually lower) the cost difference between these two houses is what people would be willing to pay to not have to endure that constant noise. I found that people were willing to pay $2,500 more to have a house in a neighborhood that does not have to hear airplanes. While this study is by no means foolproof it shows that there definitely is a cost associated with noise.
Leaf blowers also cost us in terms of our health. A German study found that people exposed to a constant and loud noise such as a leaf blower are one forth more likely to have a heart attack. A World Health Study looked at noise and not surprisingly found that annoying noises also lead to angry and irrational behavior. As anyone walking around a leaf blower will tell you, they also create pollution. Leaf blowers rely on two-stroke engine technology. This type of engine causes much more pollution then the four-stroke engines cars use. Because fuel is leaking into the combustion chamber each time there is a new charge this creates a more potent air pollutant. The California Air Resource board concluded, “Thus, for the average 1999 leaf blower and car data presented in Table 9, we calculate that hydrocarbon emissions from one-half hour of leaf blower operation equal about 7,700 miles of driving, at 30 miles per hour average speed. The carbon monoxide emission benchmark is significantly different. For carbon monoxide, one-half hour of leaf blower usage would be equivalent to about 440 miles of automobile travel at 30 miles per hour average speed.” Now this all seems pretty alarming and exaggerated but the Toronto Board of Health came up with a similar result. “Leaf blowers can be more polluting than cars. Compared to a new car (1999 or 2000 model), one hour of operation of commercial gasoline-powered lead blowers emits 498 times as much hydrocarbon's, 49 times as much particulate matter and 26 times as much carbon monoxide.” In either study the pollution generated by leaf blowers is significant. The trouble really comes from the carbon monoxide, which reduces our ability to carry blood to the heart. This affects the leaf blower user the most since they are the ones exposed to the majority of fumes. It should be noted that both these studies looked at leaf blowers built before 2000 and since that time there have been significant, although not perfect, improvements to the efficiency of leaf blowers.
Too often our environmental costs are looked at only in terms of CO2 or how many trees we are cutting down. There are many other consequences of our actions that are much harder to quantify but just as damaging. Leaf blowers negatively affect our community in several ways. These costs not just paid by the labor it takes to use them (which is significant) or in the gasoline you must buy to operate them. The real cost of leaf blowers is paid by a community that must endure this constant noise and is exposed to deadly pollution. The most unfortunate part of this cost is that those who blow the leaves aren’t the ones necessarily paying the highest cost. They are imposing this cost on everyone else. In my second part on leaf blowers next week I’ll describe what alternatives to leaf blowers exist and my personal efforts to eradicate them from our campus.