A Growing Clamor Over Leaf Blowers

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.

Cambridgehas 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 for leaf rake and patio broom. "You would never take one of these things into your house and dust with it," he said. "Because it's outside, some of that dust is going to settle in somebody else's yard."

Landscapers and manufacturers argue that leaf blowers dramatically reduce the time spent gathering leaves and cleaning littered surfaces. And the industry has invested heavily in making the machines cleaner and quieter, said Bill Harley, president of the Alexandria-based Outdoor Power Equipment Institute, a trade group.

"The equipment is 75 percent cleaner than it was in the early '90s, and we've made great strides in sound levels," he said.

Larry Will, a retired vice president of engineering for Echo, a major manufacturer, said engineers have now reduced the sound levels of the quietest gasoline models down to the level of electric machines and without "the scream." Advances include redesigning the wind-making impellers to reduce the whine, encasing engines in soundproofed covers and enlarging mufflers.

In Echo's current lineup, three hand-held models and two backpack versions meet the gold standard of relatively quiet blowers: 65 decibels, measured at 50 feet. Its five other backpack types -- more powerful and aimed at the commercial market -- range in noise from 71 to 74 decibels.

The sound level at the machines is considerably higher.

If the machines are still meeting resistance in communities across the country, they aren't with homeowners and landscapers who see them as a way to clean up properties rapidly.

Harley's organization reported shipments this year of 2.16 million hand-held gasoline blowers, an increase of more than 10 percent over last year. A total of 579,390 backpack blowers were shipped to market, a 24 percent climb over 2004.

Both types "have had a significant growth in the last few years," said Joe Fahey, vice president of marketing for Echo. He said the boom in the housing market and the greater need or desire of homeowners to have contractors do their yard work have fueled the demand. And some do-it-yourselfers have turned to hand-held gas models while others are gravitating to the more comfortable backpack versions.

Fahey said that for all the attention given to local blower bans, noise levels aren't the first attribute buyers are looking for. "Certainly, sales of low-noise models are increasing, but the lion's share of the business is for standard units," he said.

Also, many people have managed to tune out the sound or find that it melts into the whole cacophony of modern life. Amy Rothstein, a piano teacher in McLean, said the noise of neighbors' remodeling projects and the construction of two infill houses is more of a bother. "There's machinery going all the time," she said. "The blowers are just a small part of it."

"Personally," said Brilliant in Santa Barbara, "I'm very conscious of noises, and to me this was always a desecration of our community, which is otherwise famous for its beauty and charm."

"I find jackhammers to be really annoying," Fahey said. "But you know what? They serve a purpose."