This layer of sounds, a cacophony unknown to man or beast until a generation ago, now seems to define the landscape's passage to winter. Manufacturers of leaf blowers shipped a record 2.74 million gas-powered units this year alone. In addition, more than 3 million electric blowers are sold annually in North America.

When you think about it, the leaf blower forms an uncanny reflection of the fault lines in modern American society: It's a machine reviled by leftward-thinking intellectuals and beloved by red-blooded, horsepower junkies. It is an essential work mate of the laboring immigrant classes.

Some counties across the U.S. ban the sale and use of leaf blowers generating more than 70 decibels, but most jurisdictions seek to regulate them through general noise ordinances that restrict hours of use. Elsewhere, however, they are banned outright.

Since the ban was enacted by the city council in June of last year, most of the complaints have been against landscape maintenance crews. Stacey Henderson is the Palo Alto police department's officer assigned to enforce the ban, which affects residential areas. In the city's sylvan neighborhoods, she issues two warnings to each offender and then a citation. "I've had one gardener who's been cited seven times, and it's $100 a ticket," she said. "He just won't stop."

Henderson has sent out more than 5,000 warning letters to residents and their landscapers who have been subject to complaint. The result has been a quieter city, she said, though the rainy season is approaching, when the landscapers like to switch back to gas blowers to avoid getting electric shocks.

In Santa Barbara, where a similar ban on gas blowers went into effect eight years ago, "it's a lot better, but it's not perfect because there are still the electric ones," said Ashleigh Brilliant, who led the ballot initiative to enact the ban. "There are still people who defy the law, but the streets are much quieter and I think there's less dust in the air."

Brilliant by trade is an epigrammatist: He coins witticisms. He is particularly fond of one: "There are worse things than noise, but I can't think of any because of all the noise." A little verbose for my tastes, I prefer his "Make peace, not noise." Or, "Honk if you like peace and quiet."

Like an increasing number of people in the 21st-century cyberworld, Brilliant works from home, and it's the residential neighborhoods that can get aurally assaulted for hours on end.

"More people are working from home," said Brilliant, "and there just isn't an awareness of how badly detrimental noise can be as a factor in one's life."

Cambridge, Mass., is considering a ban or other restrictions on gas blowers, said Richard Rossi, the deputy city manager. "We are going to be looking at various ordinances that exist around the country, talk to cities and see how effective they are," he said.

Cambridge has more than 100,000 residents crowded into an area of little more than six square miles, with more people if you count the daily influx of students, workers and tourists. "A lot of people in this community work from home," said Rossi. A landscape crew may spend only 10 minutes at one property, but if they visit half a dozen on a street, said Rossi, "you multiply that time by five or six. People feel that's a disturbance."

Opponents of leaf blowers say noise isn't the only pollutant. The fumes from the gas engines foul the air and the machines kick up particulates containing mold, pesticides, dried animal waste and plain old dust.

John Murtagh, a city council member in Yonkers, N.Y., is pushing his colleagues to ban leaf blowers during the summer, as other communities in Westchester County have done. Murtagh said 13 percent of the city's children suffer from asthma. He said that other than in the fall, the machines' "utility is dramatically outweighed by the pollution they generate."

Les Blomberg, founder of Noise Pollution Clearinghouse, an environmental resources nonprofit group in Montpelier, Vt., said the machine is an absurdly inefficient contraption as a replacement fo
... read the whole article