From the Washington Post: "We Know You Love Your Leafblower..."

Adrian Higgins, gardening columnist for the Washington Post, has a column on the tragedy-of-the-commons represented by modern lawn care practices, and the surprisingly potent effect of ambient noise. Sample:

There is a weird human phenomenon at work here: Sound is far less irritating to its creator than to its recipient. Erica Walker, a doctoral student at Harvard University’s Chan School of Public Health, seems to have hit on one reason for this: Recipients of nuisance noise have no power over it....
The aural irritants go far beyond the leaf blower: Airplanes, buses, trains, loud-talkers, barking dogs, blaring music — all form ingredients in the sour stew. But the leaf blower is a major culprit. The most powerful models can create a stream of air exceeding 200 mph and with noise levels as high as an ear-piercing 112 decibels....
One facet of this problem is that as residents have turned over care of their yards to landscapers, what was once a weekend phenomenon from a gadget-minded homeowner is now a weekday, day-long assault on neighborhoods. Another gripe: A tool thought of as an instrument of the fall has become a three-season mainstay for crews who equate a speck-free lawn, patio and flower bed with a job well done.
The two-stroke blowers are also highly polluting, said Ruth Caplan, a civic activist in Cleveland Park and a member of a group lobbying against them, Quiet Clean D.C.
“We are concerned not only about the impact on neighbors but also on workers and feel this hasn’t been given the attention that it needs,” she said.
In a recent paper written with Jamie Banks, of an organization named Quiet Communities in Lincoln, Mass., Walker measured the sound from a commercial-grade gasoline blower at various distances. Even from 800 feet away, the noise was above the 55-decibel threshold at which sound is considered harmful by the World Health Organization, she said. Another problem is that the machines emit a low-frequency sound that is not measured conventionally but which travels long distances and penetrates building walls.

 

Action at the Local Level, D.C. Edition

Action at the Local Level, D.C. Edition

This article contains Atlantic notes by James Fallows and others about local-level civic activism in the center of a large-scale political action, Washington D.C.

As I mentioned yesterday in another note on Erie, Pennsylvania, I’ll try to send out some reports on still-functional local-level activities around the country.

Beaufort S.C. Shifts Away from Two-Stroke Machinery

The Beaufort Gazette reports on a shift in several coastal communities in South Carolina away from two-stroke gas-powered lawn equipment, and toward quieter and cleaner battery-powered machinery. Sample:

One of the area’s largest landscaping contractors thinks it can make those interruptions a little less grating. The Greenery is introducing battery-powered equipment in places like Beaufort’s Henry. C. Chambers Waterfront Park, Sun City in Okatie and Harbour Town on Hilton Head Island.
The company has purchased battery-operated Stihl backpack blowers and hedge trimmers, though the number is still only a small fraction of the gas-powered inventory.
The new blowers maxed out at 78 decibels on an iPad decibel-meter application Friday in Waterfront Park. The gas blowers peaked at 93 decibels....
Noise exposure has been an issue for officials with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said Jerry Ashmore, The Greenery’s workforce and safety director. OSHA officials monitored Greenery employees in February, measuring sound levels each hour for eight hours and averaging their findings.
Federal regulators don’t want workers exposed to noise above 85 to 87 decibels for an extended time, Ashmore said, adding the Greenery was within those limits with gas blowers.

And here is a video from the site.

WAMU on the Composer and the Leaf Blower

WAMU, the Washington D.C. public radio station based at American University, has a very interesting report about the pianist and composer Haskell Small, who pioneered some of the earliest DC-area efforts to limit ambient noise. The radio broadcast, by Matthew Schwartz, is here. An Atlantic item about Small (and about this report) is here. 

Haskell Small at his piano. Photo by Matthew Schwartz / WAMU.

Haskell Small at his piano. Photo by Matthew Schwartz / WAMU.

"How Bad Are Leaf Blowers for the Environment?" From Washington Post

In September, 2013, Brian Palmer of the Washington Post had an introduction to the environmental and public-health challenges created by two-stroke engines in leaf blowers and lawn mowers. Sample:

Cities where two-stroke engines are in particularly wide use suffer terribly from air pollution. Some of India’s urban centers, for example, are draped in heavy soot, a problem due in large part to auto-rickshaws powered by two-stroke engines. More than a decade ago, Delhi phased out tens of thousands of auto-rickshaws with two-stroke engines in favor of those with four-stroke engines that run on natural gas.... 
In leaf blowers, two-stroke engines have been shown to emit contaminants comparable to large automobiles. A 2011 test by the car experts at Edmunds showed that “a consumer-grade leaf blower emits more pollutants than a 6,200-pound 2011 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor.” The company subjected a truck, a sedan, a four-stroke and a two-stroke leaf blower to automotive emissions tests and found that under normal usage conditions — alternating the blower between high power and idle, for example — the two-stroke engine emitted nearly 299 times the hydrocarbons of the pickup truck and 93 times the hydrocarbons of the sedan. The blower emitted many times as much carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides as well. The four-stroke engine performed significantly better than the two-stroke in most of the categories, but still far worse than the car engines.
The takeaway is that if you fret about the air pollution coming out of your car’s tailpipe, you should avoid gas-powered leaf blowers.