Pride of place among Wall Street Journal stories is the so-called “A-Hed.” These are the feature-like, extensively reported, often elegantly written stories that begin on the front page and jump to inside the paper. (Why “A-Hed?” This WSJ item by Barry Newman, back in 2010, explains.)
The A-Hed in today’s paper, by Valerie Bauerlein and Jon Kemp, is about how the pandemic’s forced shift of people away from schools, offices, and other sites, and into their homes during daylight hours, has intensified awareness of ambient-noise issues. Most of all, noise from leaf blowers.
The story is worth reading in full. Two items to note here. One involves an issue that was very important in the unanimous decision of the Washington D.C. City Council to mandate a shift to battery-powered equipment. (As laid out in testimony here.) That issue is the distinct acoustic property of noise from gas-powered leaf blowers, which makes it uniquely penetrating. The WSJ story says:
The buzzing of any lawn equipment can wreck a video call, but leaf blowers emit a low-frequency sound that has a long wavelength that passes easily through walls and closed windows, similar to the bass in a car radio.
The way the sound modulates as the leaf-pushing engines are gunned is another irritant, said Catherine Palmer , director of audiology for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s integrated health system. While steady droning sounds may fade into the background, humans are wired to notice sudden changes in noise, she said.
This may be useful for evading threats in the wild, but it makes tuning out suburban sounds difficult, she said.
The other issue is an apparent shift in the position of the lawn-care lobby, which previously had opposed restrictions and pretended that “courteous use” could eliminate all problems. From the WSJ:
If you made a list of people wanting to get rid of gas-powered backpack blowers using simple two-stroke engines, landscapers would be first in line, said Bob Mann , who directs state and local government relations for the National Association of Landscape Professionals, a trade group with nearly 100,000 members. “No one’s closer to the noise than the landscape contractor who has the thing strapped on their back,” he said.
Electric blowers have greatly improved and the industry will get there, he said, but it is expensive to sink money into new equipment. And landscapers say using only rakes and brooms would take far longer and be cost prohibitive.
Well done by the Journal, Valerie Bauerlein, and Jon Kemp.