The pandemic affecting the United States and the world is shattering businesses, putting unprecedented pressure on hospitals and health care workers, and leaving lives and families permanently changed.
This week the New York Times wrote about another effect. With so many millions of people now spending daytime hours at home, they are newly aware of the public-nuisance side effects of the machinery discussed in this site over the years. Namely, the technologically obsolete, environmentally destructive, ear-damaging equipment used in gas-powered leaf-blowing machines.
In his Times article, Michael Wilson wrote:
The coronavirus pandemic may have accomplished what years of complaining, eye-rolling and window slamming could not in suburban New York: silencing leaf blowers, their loud motors further rattling nerves and perhaps (Who knows, maybe? But almost certainly not?) spreading the virus.
And:
“Blowing all this stuff in the air,” said Ken Wray, the mayor of Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., though he used a cruder word than stuff. “It’s just completely not necessary to do that. Sometime around 20 years ago, guys stopped blow-drying their hair and started blow-drying their lawns.”
Because the coronavirus is a respiratory disease, Mayor Weitzner said, the decision early this year to ban, during the summer months, machines some see as creating air pollutants was roundly welcomed.
“I’ve not gotten one complaint,” he said.
Update #1: The town supervisor of Huntington NY, Chad Lupinacci, has asked town “residents and landscapers refrain from gas-powered and other types of leaf blower use during the Coronavirus pandemic.”
Update #2: A reader in North Carolina writes in about his experience.
“Here in Raleigh, North Carolina we are all under stay at home orders as is much of the country. Only essential services are allowed. This morning as I walked my dog to the park across the street for his essential servicing, I was confronted by two landscape workers at the corner condominium running leaf blowers at full-bore. This was to "sweep" the sidewalk, as there are no fallen leaves in early spring.
“I was struck by how incredibly dangerous this is and how non-essential. Should leaf blowers be allowed to run at all during these times? I despise them entirely, but especially now it seems crazy to let people run machinery that has the express purpose of making everything on the ground fly into the air. I am supposed to stay six feet away from everyone, and of course I do, and now I am expected to wear a mask at the grocery store, which I also do, but these leaf blowers are allowed to spew every bit of dust, allergens, and pathogens, including the novel Coronavirus, dozens of feet into the air and directly into my face from dozens of feet away?
“I know that this isn't the most pressing thing on all of our plates, but it sure seems to me that use of leaf blowers is something that should be banned until we have a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine available. Perhaps by that time, people will learn the joys of using a rake or broom and we can be done with leaf blowers altogether.”