Do you adore your leaf blower? Do you consider sleeping with it tucked under one arm because it makes fall so easy? David Dudley in CityLab would like some words with you:
- The crude little two-stroke engines used by most commercial backpack-style blowers are pollution bombs. “Simplest benchmark: running a leafblower for 30 minutes creates more emissions than driving a F-150 pickup truck 3800 miles,” [James] Fallows writes. “About one-third of the gasoline that goes into this sort of engine is spewed out, unburned, in an aerosol mixed with oil in the exhaust.”
- Those emissions—plus all the other fine-particulate crap that the blowers kick up—constitute a public health hazard for anyone in the vicinity, but especially for the poor bastard running the thing. In most cities and suburbs, those most afflicted are low-wage employees of landscaping companies, not residents or homeowners.
- SWEET JESUS THE NOISE GAAH MAKE IT STOP. A gas blower at full cry can exceed a 100 decibels for the operator (OSHA requires hearing protections at 85), as these Sacramento blower foes explain, and it carries for hundreds of feet in every direction, irritating all who dwell therein.
Having just raked again, yesterday, I still don’t have much sympathy for those who use the gasoline-powered things (I should imagine there are electrically powered versions). It may be another example of chasing leisure and labor-saving to the nth degree, and seeing as exercise has once again been singled out as a positive, this time in the realm of memory retention, I gotta say that these little beasties are not cute enough to keep around.
