Proposal for a Seasonal Statewide Ban in New York

From the Huntington C.A.L.M. site.

Huntington C.A.L.M. is a group in New York that advocates for environmentally sustainable landscaping practices. The initials stand for Clean Alternative Landscaping Methods.

It has announced an initiative by N.Y. State Senator John Liu, that would ban gas-powered leaf blower use during five warm-weather months of the year. The ban would start on May 1, and run through September 30.

That would allow use for “serious” cleanup purposes in the spring, through March and April, and in the fall, through October and November.

More details on the C.A.L.M. site, here.

Citizens in Oregon and Massachusetts Urge Pandemic-Era Moratorium on Blower Use

Yesterday we noted the additional public-health and environmental-justice challenges that hyper-polluting gas-powered lawn equipment creates during a time of pandemic. Because of these dangers a group in Florida has started a Change.Org petition for an emergency moratorium.

Similar efforts are now underway in Oregon and Massachusetts.

You can see the Oregon petition here, and the one for Massachusetts here.

More information from the non-profit Quiet Communities here.

Air Pollution During Time of Pandemic

As the science of pandemic continues to mystify, deepen, and unfold, evidence grows about the role of air pollution as an important intensifying factor in the respiratory damage done by Covid-19.

Here are two developments:

1) Ongoing reports from the site Quiet Communities, about public health data. For instance:

“According to a recent Harvard study, long-term exposure to the type of pollution that GLBs produce may significantly raise the risk of death from COVID-19 (Wu, as of 4/24/20). These researchers found that a one microgram increase in concentration of fine particulates was associated with an 8% increase in risk of COVID-19 related death. Even short-term elevations in particulate matter, both fine and coarse, have been linked to acute respiratory infections, asthma, COPD, heart attacks, heart failure, and mortality (Home, 2018; Liu, 2019).

“The magnitude of the problem cannot be overstated. It is estimated that, in one hour, a single commercial GLB produces 34 million micrograms of particulate matter, much of which remains in the air for long periods (Quiet Communities, 2020; US EPA). And keep in mind that GLBs are rarely used one at a time as recommended by industry. Rather, it is common to see 2- or 3-man crews, even on small properties. And, unlike PM2.5 from power plants, traffic, and other industrial sources, PM2.5 from leaf blowers and other handheld tools is localized, highly concentrated, and produced in close proximity to airways. (Indeed, the possibility of COVID-19 spread by PM (fine and coarse) has been raised in recent studies (Setti, 2020; Lu, 2020).”

2) A Change.org petition from Florida, asking for emergency measures there to limit highly polluting blower use during the pandemic. Example:

“In addition to spreading harmful particles, the exhaust from gasoline leaf blowers combines with sunlight to produce ground-level ozone that can cause immediate respiratory symptoms and may exacerbate long-term lung disease. Other pollutants caused by gasoline leaf blowers adversely affect health, particularly for the young and elderly...

“Leaf blowers are routinely used less than 50 feet from unconsenting pedestrians, and neighboring homes and businesses…. The U.S. EPA reports that noise degrades quality of life by impairing communication and social interaction; reducing the accuracy of work, particularly complex tasks, and creating stressful levels of frustration and aggravation that last even when the noise has ceased.”

The Coronavirus Effect

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.

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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.”

Illinois Considers a State-Wide Ban

Via Jeremy Coumbes of WLDS in Illinois, this news on proposed state-wide legislation there:

A bill filed in the Illinois General Assembly this week would ban the use of gas powered leaf blowers in the State of Illinois.

9th District Senator Laura Fine of Glenview, Illinois introduced Senate Bill 3313 on Tuesday. The bill calls for a ban of the operation or retail sale of gas powered leaf blowers beginning on January 1st of 2022.

Details of Sen. Fine’s bill are here. Congratulations to Sen. Fine and her allies in this effort.

California Launches a New Effort to Ban Blowers

From the January 6, 2020, business section of the Chronicle.

A story by Mallory Moench in the San Francisco Chronicle lays it out:

Running a lawn mower for an hour generates as much smog-forming pollution as driving a 2017 Toyota Camry from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, according to the California Air Resources Board, which works to keep the air clean. A leaf blower is worse — all the way to Denver. Daily exposure to the fumes also increases cancer risks, a 2018 air board study found.

“The reason that they’re such high polluters, there’s not anything fundamentally different about engines, they’re not fundamentally dirtier, but we haven’t put effort into cleaning them up like cars,” said Dorothy Fibiger, an engineer with the air board’s Monitoring and Laboratory Division. Because some machines such as leaf blowers are handheld, they can’t take on added weight for equipment — like the catalytic converters carried by cars — that reduces emissions, she explained.

The whole story is worth reading. As mentioned in this Atlantic piece from last year, California is the only state that is legally allowed to regulate lawn equipment on air-pollution grounds—rather than on the basis of noise control and other public health reasons. But action against this technologically obsolete, gratuitously polluting equipment is spreading rapidly.

Hearing and Health: the Evidence Accumulates

On the last day of 2019, the New York Times’s personal-health writer, Jane Brody, had a column about new evidence on the health damage done by hearing loss — which, in turn, is related to rising levels of ambient noise. As Brody put it:

“[M]yriad health-damaging effects [are] linked to untreated hearing loss, a problem that afflicts nearly 38 million Americans and, according to two huge recent studies, increases the risk of dementia, depression, falls and even cardiovascular diseases….

“A large [new] study has documented that even among people with so-called normal hearing, those with only slightly poorer hearing than perfect can experience cognitive deficits….

Hearing loss is now known to be the largest modifiable risk factor for developing dementia, exceeding that of smoking, high blood pressure, lack of exercise and social isolation, according to an international analysis published in The Lancet in 2017.

The new study Brody was referring to, with the title “Association of Subclinical Hearing Loss With Cognitive Performance,“ is available from PubMed, here.

Noise is 'The New Second-Hand Smoke': Panel at American Public Health Association

From the Quiet Communities site.

Quiet Communities has a report on a panel at the American Public Health Association, about the ever-increasing role of environmental noise as “the new second-hand smoke,” and the serious public-health consequences of resultant hearing loss.

A sample:

Noise is not just a nuisance, it’s a growing public health hazard and action is long overdue.

That’s the message delivered at the November 2019 annual meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA) in Philadelphia, where doctors and other specialists identified evidence that “environmental noise” underlies a myriad of health problems reaching well beyond hearing loss.

The sources of this noise range widely, from aircraft takeoffs and landings, construction activity and loud music, to gas-powered lawn and garden equipment and widespread use of personal listening devices….

The title given to the APHA meeting session—“Environmental Noise: the New Second-Hand Smoke”—likened the problem to that which has prompted limits nationally on smoking tobacco in public places. Dr. Lucy Weinstein, co-chair of APHA’s Noise and Health Committee, said the reports give impetus to updating and acting on the organization’s 2013 noise policy statement that advocated federal action.

“The ways in which we define and measure noise contribute to [political] inattention to noise as a public health problem,” said Dr. Jamie Banks, executive director of Quiet Communities Inc. (QCI), a Massachusetts-based nonprofit educational and advocacy organization.

The report is worth reading in full. Thanks and congratulations to Quiet Communities, the APHA, and the medical and public-health officials devoting time to this issue.

A Canadian City Says: Let's Move Away from Gas-Powered Blowers

Almost every day there’s another news item like this: a city deciding that, for environmental and public-health reasons, it’s time to phase out obsolete gas-powered blowers.

Today’s item is from Oak Bay, in the Canadian province of British Columbia. An article by Travis Paterson in the Oak Bay News is headlined, “Interest swirls in Oak Bay to ban gas-powered leaf blowers.“ Sample from the story:

Count Oak Bay Councillor. Tara Ney as the latest politician in the region interested in banning gas-powered leaf blowers….

What Ney is proposing is to have Oak Bay’s newly created climate action working group consider a ban for their report….Specifically, it’s the obsolete two-stroke engines that need to go, Ney said.

“People value Oak Bay as a clean and quiet community. If we can phase out the two-stroke, I hope we can then move to reducing leaf blowers. This is autumn and when I was a kid you heard the whoosh and scrape of rakes. Now you hear a whir.”

See more at the Oak Bay News site. Good luck to our friends in B.C.

The German Environment Ministry Says: Avoid Using Leafblowers At All

Here is the headline on a BBC item this week:

From the BBC story.

This week the BBC, quoting a German newspaper and government report, said that Germany’s environment ministry was urging a drastic cutback on use of leaf blowers, of any sort. The reason was their contribution to the dramatic fall in insect populations around the world.

Samples from the story:

The German government has warned against the use of leaf blowers over concerns for insects and the environment.

Germany's Ministry for the Environment said leaf blowers were too loud, polluted the air and posed a fatal threat to insects.

The ministry issued the guidance in response to a request by a Green MP.

Leaf blowers should not be used unless they are "indispensable", the ministry said….

Leaf blowers can be "fatal to insects in the foliage", the ministry said.

"There is a risk that small animals are absorbed or blown and thereby damaged," the ministry said in a statement.

The Importance of Leaves

Is it really important to remove fallen leaves, in the autumn, so they don’t clutter up lawns and garden spaces?

On the web site of the Potomac Conservancy, Edamarie Mattei, of Backyard Bounty, argues that in fact it is is far better all around to let many of the leaves lie — or to shred them and use the resulting organic material to enrich the soil.

Sample:

Traditional practice has been to rake or blow the leaves off lawns and garden beds — clearing beds of the remains of the plants from the season so the garden enters winter neat and clear of all but a coat of mulch.  I know it’s fall when I hear the sounds of gas blowers and see the large trucks driving around towns sucking up leaves. 

Why is this wrong? When you take away the leaves, you take away a winter blanket, food, and habitat.

“Leaf litter is an important component of healthy soil. Decomposing leaf litter releases nutrients into the soil and also keeps it moist. It also serves as great nesting material, hiding places and protected spots for animals. This dead organic material provides the perfect habitat for a plethora of organisms, including worms, snails, spiders, and microscopic decomposers like fungi and bacteria. For this reason, leaf litter is considered very biodiverse.”
— Scientific American

Worth reading in its entirety. Thanks to Edamarie Mattei and the Potomac Conservancy.

More Global Action

The concept of ambient noise as “the new second-hand smoke,” and an increasing public-health problem, is gaining worldwide recognition. Two of the latest, significant illustrations:

1) “Ssssh: As cities surge, some seek a new aim - peace and quiet.“ This is a Reuters report, by Carey L. Biron and Adela Suliman, which includes our Washington-based initiative to phase out gas-powered leaf blowers, but covers developments around the world. For instance:

Efforts to slow the pace of city life range from the literal - with many cities pushing for lower speed limits on their roads - to the imaginative, such as looking for ways to promote mindfulness.

Many of them include a recognition of the rising importance of public spaces that are geared more toward quiet and contemplation than efficiency and technology.

Noise, for example, is the “new secondhand smoke”, according to the The Quiet Coalition, a program of Massachusetts-based non-profit., Quiet Communities, Inc.

“We’re in a noisier and noisier world,” said the group’s executive director, Jamie L. Banks. Finding ways to change that is “urgent”, she said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said the health risks of living in noisy cities can include hearing loss, cardiovascular disease and sleep disorders.

2) “Why Everything Is Getting Louder,” by Bianca Bosker, in the new issue of The Atlantic, also discussed mounting public-health challenges. For instance:

Scientists have known for decades that noise—even at the seemingly innocuous volume of car traffic—is bad for us. “Calling noise a nuisance is like calling smog an inconvenience,” former U.S. Surgeon General William Stewart said in 1978. In the years since, numerous studies have only underscored his assertion that noise “must be considered a hazard to the health of people everywhere.”

Say you’re trying to fall asleep. You may think you’ve tuned out the grumble of trucks downshifting outside, but your body has not: Your adrenal glands are pumping stress hormones, your blood pressure and heart rate are rising, your digestion is slowing down. Your brain continues to process sounds while you snooze, and your blood pressure spikes in response to clatter as low as 33 decibels—slightly louder than a purring cat….

Experts say your body does not adapt to noise. Large-scale studies show that if the din keeps up—over days, months, years—noise exposure increases your risk of high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, and heart attacks, as well as strokes, diabetes, dementia, and depression.

Both reports are well worth reading, and acting on.