Robert M. Meyers is an M.D. in Chicago, whose specialities include hearing disorders. He is quoted in this Atlantic magazine piece, saying about the auditory-damage effects of gas-powered lawn equipment:

“Each time I see these crews, I think to myself: ‘10 years from now, they’ll be on the path to premature deafness.’ ”

He has now written an essay about the autumnal “Invasion of the Leaf Blowers.” It emphasizes the environmental-justice aspects of reliance on hyper-polluting, hyper-noisy gas-powered lawn equipment. For the householders who employ lawn crews, this is a nuisance. For the workers — typically much lower-income than the householders, frequently non-English speaking and in other ways at a disadvantage — it is an active health threat.

With Dr. Meyers’ permission, his essay is below:

It happens every fall. Men wearing muffs, carrying very noisy machines, invade.
I am an ear nose and throat doctor and I know the decibel level of their machines will ultimately result in deafness for them. This is in spite of the inadequate muffs offered by their bosses.
The science is simple. Leaf blowers are run by either gasoline engines or electric motors. The gasoline engines produce low frequency sound which travels further, more easily penetrates house walls and is ultimately more damaging than the electric to the sensitive microscopic hair cells in the inner ear, which perceives sound and transmits signals to the brain. Once damaged these hair cells do not recover.
The electric requires a direct cord which is cumbersome or a lithium battery which makes it cordless. These batteries require recharging which makes them less popular by the user, therefore the gasoline are much more popular and much more damaging.
But what about the ‘leaf blowers’ health. The closer to the sound source, the more decibels affecting the user the more the damage. The leaf blower gets about 100 decibels of constant noise. The home owner gets 70 of intermittent noise, a multiple less. What does this mean in damage? Without being too technical, the damage to the inner ear is dependent on decibels. For every 3 decibel increase in sound, the ear gets twice as much potential damage. So when you increase the decibels, say from 70 to 85, you stress the inner ear not just about 20% but by a factor of 31 times! When you go from 70 to 100 which is what the leaf-blower is getting, the ‘sound damage’ to the ear is 1000 times greater to the poor leaf blower’s ear. Nobody advocates for him. ..
No one seems to care about the future of the ‘leaf blowers’ hearing because they are ‘aliens’ appearing to ‘invade’ our borders…