'More Pollution Than Cars?' A Remarkable Report from California

From KQED's California Report on February 13, 2017. 

From KQED's California Report on February 13, 2017. 

A story this week from The California Report, for the San Francisco public broadcasting station KQED, stresses the surprisingly important public-health and environmental-justice aspects of the seemingly trivial practice of using dirty, noisy, gas-powered lawn equipment. As the story by David Gorn begins:

They may look pretty innocuous — those leaf blowers, hedge trimmers and gas mowers wielded by a small army of gardening crews across the state
They’re not.
According to state air quality officials, those machines are some of the biggest polluters in California. In fact, by 2020, leaf blowers and other small gas engines will create more ozone pollution than all of the passenger cars in the state.
Yes, really, there will be more pollution from gas-powered gardening equipment than from cars, confirms Michael Benjamin, division chief at the California Air Resources Board.

How can this be?

There’s a reason for that: Regulations on car exhaust have gotten tighter and tighter over the years, substantially reducing their ozone-damaging emissions. At the same time, while there have been some controls on the smaller gas engines, there haven’t been enough, says Benjamin.

***

The story also very clearly emphasizes the environmental-justice aspect of hired lawn crews, which in California are mainly staffed by lower-wage Latino workers, being chronically exposed to dangerous emissions. It quotes the head of the American Green Zone Alliance, Dan Mabe:

Mabe has worked these gardening crews himself — “since I was 7 years old” — and has the health scares and breathing problems to prove it. Mabe’s crusade to trade in gas for electric machinery is based on a desire to improve air quality and workers’ health. But there’s another motivation for him. Many gardening crews across California are Latino, he says, and that takes the discussion to another level.
You can call it environmental justice. It’s a demographic that isn’t really being addressed.”

It's a very strong report that deserves wide attention, especially the next time you hear that eliminating these obsolete, hyper-polluting machines is a "First World Problem." 

Latest Bad News on Particulate Pollution: the Dementia Factor

As a reminder, the main problem with gas-powered two-stroke engines is not the most obvious one: that they are so loud. Rather it is that the engines are so disproportionately dirty, emissions-heavy, and polluting. That's why they have been outmoded or outlawed for most other uses in Europe and North America, except for leaf blowers and other lawn equipment. 

Over the past half-century, emissions from car and truck engines have gone down by 95% or more (depending on the measure you use). Power-generation is rapidly shifting toward renewable and less polluting sources. But the antique technology of two-stroke engines, which very inefficiently burn a mixture of oil and gas, remains an exception. Developing-world metropolises like Bangkok, Jakarta, Manila, and New Delhi have mounted major efforts to get two-stroke engines off their roads, because they contribute so heavily to pollution. (For more on the third-world aspects of this drama, see a list of references at the bottom of this item.) Fifty years ago, these engines were common in a variety of transport uses in the U.S. and Europe. These days they survive mainly in lawn equipment.

And now comes a report by Emily Underwood in Science magazine, whose subhead conveys its message: "Evidence builds that dirty air causes Alzheimer’s, dementia." That is, fine-particulate pollution, of which there are many sources but that two-stroke engines create to a disproportionate degree, is associated with mental problems in addition to its other known health effects. Sample:   

Some of the health risks of inhaling fine and ultrafine particles are well-established, such as asthma, lung cancer, and, most recently, heart disease. But a growing body of evidence suggests that exposure can also harm the brain, accelerating cognitive aging, and may even increase risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. 

Please read the full story for more. It explains some of the fascinating biological and neurological hypotheses about how the mental damage might occur. Again the main point is: these engines are an outlier exception to the pace of cleaner and safer equipment in most other uses. And in much of the United States, the people are most at risk from long-term exposure to their effects are the hired lawn crews -- who are generally low-wage and not protected by long-term health insurance.

The Science story concludes, quoting a USC neuroscientist named Caleb Finch:

If PM2.5 is guilty as charged, they say, the goal for policymakers worldwide should be to push down levels as far as possible. When all the research is in, Finch says, “I think [air pollution] will turn out to be just the same as tobacco—there’s no safe threshold.”

***

More on what the rest of the world is doing about two-stroke engines:

 

Newton, Mass., Adopts a Summer Ban on Gas-Powered Blowers

This article from the Newton TAB describes a new measure approved by the city council. Among its other provisions, it (a) says that leaf blowers used at any time during the year must put out sound of 65 decibels or less (which is well below the level of most current gas-powered machines), and (b) says that gas-powered blowers cannot be used at all in the summer months.

Sample from the story:

The City Council approved a new leafblower ordinance, 20-4, around 12:30 a.m. Wednesday morning after four hours of debate and votes on 11 proposed amendments.
Councilors spent two years working towards last night's vote, with many residents demanding the council take steps to address the noise and air pollution of leafblowers....
For years, Newton's sound ordinance has limited leafblowers to 65 decibels. But the rule is widely ignored and never enforced, with landscapers using much louder 77-decibel devices.
The new ordinance maintains the 65-decibel level and – to ease and boost enforcement – will require all leafblowers bear a manufacturer's label showing they are 65 decibels or quieter.

The full TAB story is here.

***

The ongoing argument for moving away from dirty, hyper-polluting two-stroke gas engines is that public health information is making their dangers more evidence, and technology is rapidly offering realistic alternatives. Cities like Bangkok, Jakarta, Manila, and Dhaka have over the past decade imposed increasingly stiff bans on two-stroke engines, because their use (mainly in scooters, tuktuks, and other transport vehicles) was such an important source of pollution and related health dangers. The United States long ago forced its transportation system onto a less-polluting path. Now cities like Newton are catching up with the main remaining, outlier use of an antique technology.

Electric Leaf Blowers Come to DC -- in an Unexpected Form

Quiet, clean, yet demonstrably powerful electric leaf-blower in use in DC, as shown in screenshot from Saturday Night Live on February 11, 2017.  Embedded video of the "cold open" is below.

Quiet, clean, yet demonstrably powerful electric leaf-blower in use in DC, as shown in screenshot from Saturday Night Live on February 11, 2017.  Embedded video of the "cold open" is below.

The effort to bring cleaner, more sustainable, quieter, and healthier maintenance practices to neighborhoods across the country knows no partisan bounds. So in an above-politics, enjoy-the-comedy spirit, we offer this scene from last night's cold open of Saturday Night Live. In it, Melissa McCarthy, playing White House press secretary Sean Spicer, uses a new electric-powered leaf blower (rather than a dirty old two-stroke gas-powered model) to "blow away their dishonesty" as she deals with a reporter played by Cecily Strong.

The relevant part of the clip starts at around time 7:00 of the segment below.

Note how much quieter and cleaner this machine is than the outdated ones it is destined to replace! Thanks to SNL for illustrating technology's promise.

'A Quarter of Adults Have Hearing Loss' -- and external noise is causing it: CDC

The Washington Post has a story on an under-appreciated, and spreading, public-health issue. The story, which is based on a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is about hearing damage and hearing loss among adults, starting with people in their 20s. The story begins:

Forty million American adults have lost some hearing because of noise, and half of them suffered the damage outside the workplace, from everyday exposure to leaf blowers, sirens, rock concerts and other loud sounds, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Tuesday.
A quarter of people ages 20 to 69 were suffering some hearing deficits, the CDC reported in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, even though the vast majority of the people in the study claimed to have good or excellent hearing.

The story goes on to name the sources of the damage, and some of its implications (with emphasis added):

The review's more surprising finding — which the CDC had not previously studied — was that 53 percent of those people said they had no regular exposure to loud noise at work. That means the hearing loss was caused by other environmental factors...
“Noise is damaging hearing before anyone notices or diagnoses it,” said Anne Schuchat, the CDC's acting director. “Because of that, the start of hearing loss is underrecognized.”
The study revealed that 19 percent of people between the ages of 20 and 29 had some hearing loss, a finding that Schuchat called alarming....
Hearing damage results from a combination of volume and the length of the exposure. One minute of hearing a 120-decibel siren can damage hearing, the CDC said. So can two hours of exposure to a 90-decibel leaf blower

As the National Institute of Deafness has explained, hearing damage of this sort is likely to be cumulative and permanent, since repeated exposure to loud noises lastingly damages the stereocilia, or sensor hairs, inside the ear on which hearing depends. Further NIH information on hearing loss is at this site. The full Post story is worth reading, here. The CDC report itself is here. (Direct link: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p0207-hearing-loss.html)

"Let Sleeping Leaves Lie."

The Illinois Farm Bureau site Partners has a new post up, on the advantages of dealing with leaves by mulching-in-place. The full item is here. Samples of its recommendations:

Your trees put all that energy into producing leaves – useful organic matter. Shouldn’t your property benefit? You can find better uses for fallen leaves than transporting them to municipal landfills, or worse, burning them. Think about it, a no-rake autumn.
Jump on your mower and mow those leaves in place on your lawn.... Set the mower at 3 inches, and mow weekly during fall leaf season whether the grass needs it or not. Leaves seem to shred more easily when a little damp, so mow in the morning after a light dew....
Want to start a new shade garden? Direct the shredded leaves blowing out of the mower under the tree’s canopy. It creates a bed rich in organic matter, while also protecting the tree’s roots from temperature extremes and moisture loss. The leaves decompose over time, mimicking what happens in the forest. The tree self-fertilizes, freeing you from both raking and fertilizing.... 
Don’t throw away a valuable resource with your trash. Instead, use it to improve your landscape, save money and cut down on garden chores.

"Is Your Noisy Neighborhood Slowly Killing You?" From Mother Jones.

Related to the recent editorial in the American Journal of Public Health, arguing that "secondhand noise" was becoming the counterpart to secondhand smoke in causing real, measurable, health damage, Florence Williams has a fascinating (and disturbing) story in the Jan/Feb 2017 issue of Mother Jones on the effects of noise on cognition and learning ability.  Samples:

The world is getting louder. Scientists define "noise" as unwanted sound, and the level of background din from human activities has been doubling roughly every three decades, beating population growth.... This growing anthropophony (a fancy word for the human soundscape) is also contributing to stress-related diseases and early death, especially in and around cities.
By evolutionary necessity, noise triggers a potent stress response. We are more easily startled by unexpected sounds than by objects that come suddenly into our field of vision. Our nervous systems react to noises that are loud and abrupt (gunshots, a backfiring engine), rumbling (airplanes), or whining and chaotic (leaf blowers, coffee grinders) by instructing our bodies to boost the heart rate, breathe less deeply, and release fight-or-flight hormones.

 And:

Even if you think you're immune to city noise, it may well be affecting your health. The best research on this comes out of Europe. In one study of 4,861 adults, a 10-decibel increase in nighttime noise was linked to a 14 percent rise in a person's likelihood of being diagnosed with hypertension.... 
Yet another depressing study examined the cognition of 2,800 students in 89 schools across Europe. Published in The Lancet in 2005, it found that aircraft and road noise had significant impacts on reading comprehension and certain kinds of memory. The results, adjusted for family income, the mother's education, and other confounding factors, were linear. For every five-decibel noise increase, the reading scores of British children dropped by the equivalent of a two-month delay, so that kids in neighborhoods that were 20 decibels louder than average were almost a year behind. 
This was no fluke: "To date, over 20 studies have shown a negative effect of environmental noise exposure on children's learning outcomes and cognitive performance," notes a 2013 paper in the Journal of Environmental Psychology. "Studies have demonstrated that children with chronic aircraft, road traffic or rail noise exposure at school have poorer reading ability, memory, and academic performance on national standardised tests." There's science behind the saying "You can't hear yourself think."

Williams goes on to make the obvious environmental-justice point: the neighborhoods likeliest to be very noisy are also exposed to pollutants and hazards of all other sorts. Worth reading in full. 

"Secondhand Noise": This Era's Counterpart to Secondhand Smoke

The American Journal of Public Health has published an editorial in its January, 2017 edition. Its author, a medical doctor and MBA named Daniel J. Fink, argues that prevailing concepts of "safe" levels of noise exposure are badly outdated

Two aspects of the argument are particularly interesting. One is that hearing problems are rising more quickly than the simple demographics of an aging population would indicate. For instance:

Urbanization exposes people to higher average noise levels. News reports document intermittent exposure to loud outdoor noise from yard equipment, construction, vehicles, and aircraft and to loud indoor noise, with sound levels of 90 to 100 decibels or greater in restaurants, movie theaters, gyms, concerts, sports events, and other places. Use of personal music players at high volume with earbuds or headphones is common, especially among the young.
The number of Americans with hearing loss increased from 13.2 million (6.3% of the US population) in 1971 to 20.3 million (8%) in 19915 to 48 million (15.3%) in 2011. Numbers are approximate because of methods used to study epidemiology of auditory disorders. Part of the increase is because of the growth of older age groups with a very high prevalence of hearing loss. An increase in hearing loss also occurred in those younger than 20 years. ... Higher noise levels may contribute to increased prevalence of hypertension, diabetes, and obesity.

 

The other is the editorial's argument that "secondhand noise" is this era's counterpart to the secondhand smoke, with public health consequences that need to be recognized. As Dr. Fink puts it:  

In the 1950s, half of all American men smoked. When research showed that smoking caused cancer, heart disease, and other health problems, doctors and the public health community spoke out, leading to the first Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health, decreased smoking rates, and, eventually, a largely smoke-free environment, with dramatic reductions in morbidity and mortality. People still have the right to smoke, just not where others are exposed to secondhand smoke.
A similar approach is needed for noise.... People should still be allowed to make noise, just as they are still allowed to smoke, but not where others are exposed involuntarily to their noise. Where noise may be part of the experience, for example, clubs, concerts, and sports events, warning signs should be posted and hearing protection offered. If the United States could become largely smoke-free, it can also become quieter. As with smoke-free air, a quieter environment will benefit all.

Dr. Fink has a post at The Quiet Coalition site amplifying the public-health argument. And a post there last month explicitly made the noise/smoke connection: "Noise Is the New Secondhand Smoke"

 

Palm Beach, FL, Takes an Anti-Leaf Blower Step

This week a committee of the Palm Beach Town Council took a step toward banning leaf-blower use within the city. "The residents don’t want them,” one committee member said. “My opinion is that the majority of the residents in town are ready for a ban.”

The story is in the Palm Beach Daily News, by Aleesa Kopf, and you can read the whole thing here. Samples:

 

Leaf blowers could be on their way out of Palm Beach.
The town’s Ordinances, Rules and Standards Committee recommended Thursday to ban landscape companies from using the noisy machines in Palm Beach.
Members Bobbie Lindsay and Danielle Moore made their decision based on a groundswell of support over the past several months. Advocates for the ban cite noise, health and safety concerns.
“The residents don’t want them,” Lindsay said. “My opinion is that the majority of the residents in town are ready for a ban.”...
Rita Sullivan called the machines dangerous for workers who can’t hear what’s going on around them and for residents who have debris blown in their faces. She said the noise and air pollution blowers cause, and the friction they create between neighbors, are bad for quality of life on the island....
“The town has been dealing with this nuisance for 25 years with very little progress,” he said. “Leaf blowers cannot be regulated. We have tried for years to regulate these things. It’s pragmatically impossible. These things have to be banned. Period.”
 

"Grif" Johnson Receives D.C. Community Cornerstone Award

Early this month Washington D.C. Councilmember-at-large Anita Bonds released a list of the 2016 "Community Cornerstone" honorees. These are people whose civic engagement has made a difference in the life of the community. As Councilmember Bonds said in her announcement of this year's honorees:

Each is a cornerstone of our community. They make an extraordinary impact on the quality of life and general well-being of the residents of the District of Columbia through their efforts in: Arts & Entertainment, Business Development, Elected Representation and Politics, Health and Social Services,Social Justice, and Community Leadership.

One of those selected was John Griffith "Grif" Johnson, who has been a major figure in the QCDC organization as well. Anita Bonds described his work this way:

John Griffith Johnson, Community Services Advocate
Upon achieving 90% retirement from practicing law in 2010, "Grif" became active in a variety of community-oriented projects. From tutoring 3rd and 4th grade students, teaching the English language to adult learners, and helping senior high school students develop life skills, Grif believes that education can change lives. He also served as Chair of a non-profit and remains an active member of the board. He has also volunteered on other projects, including working on Saturday mornings to help refurbish various D.C. Public School facilities. He continues to deliver food weekly to persons who are confined to their homes and who are coping with serious illnesses.
More recently, Grif joined a group of D.C. residents who are committed to educating the public about the environmental and public-health harms caused by the use of combustion-engine leaf blowers.

Congratulations! 

Quiet Communities announces a "Quiet Coalition"

Quiet Communities, a public-health oriented non-profit based in Boston, has announced "The Quiet Coalition," a movement to direct attention to the chronic and acute health effects of increasing levels of ambient noise.

From their announcement:

The group is focused on getting policy makers in the U.S. as well as citizens to realize that noise is a burgeoning public health problem in the U.S. The founding chair is Daniel Fink MD, an internist who also serves as interim chair of Quiet Communities’ Health Advisory Council.
Unsafe levels of noise pervade our communities – from landscape maintenance, construction, restaurant music, sporting events, sirens, alarms, household appliances, toys and video games, personal listening devices, and air, road, and rail traffic. The sounds are often many times higher than those considered safe.
“The scientific evidence is incontrovertible: noise causes hearing loss and other health problems. We have a responsibility to speak up just as experts did when the dangers of smoking became known,” says Dr. Fink.

 

"The Devil's Hair Dryer," from City Lab

In November 2016, at the City Lab site, David Dudley wrote about the noise effects of two-stroke engines, mainly through the increasing use of two-stroke gas-powered leafblowers. Sample:

Other people who tend to complain about leaf blowers live next to (or attend) schools and universities, which doesn’t bode well for the quality of the learning going on in there. “Anecdotally, there are many teachers who have written to me discussing how campus lawn and garden maintenance activities disrupt their classroom instruction,” Walker tells me via email. “Some have had to stop class because students can’t hear their lecture.”
Noise pollution is particularly harmful for children, as decades of public health studies have demonstrated, and most efforts to silence the din of gas-powered blowers have focused on their auditory toll. Campaigns to forbid leaf blowers have been successfully waged from Long Island to South Pasadena*, many led by a national nonprofit, Quiet Communities, which has a mission to “promote clean, sustainable, and quiet outdoor maintenance practices.” One progressive solution proffered by commercial landscapers with eco-minded clients: high-tech battery-powered blowers like this bad boy, which costs as much as a (crappy) used car and runs for an hour on its lithium battery, but makes a bit less noise and a lot less smog.

He also added this chart, from the latest Greater Boston Noise report, of incidence of complaints: