Leaf blowers: Noisy, unhealthy and expensive, these devices invade Ottawa every fall, just as we are trying to enjoy nature’s beauty.
I have largely made my peace with the 1970s. Disco did not, contrary to my worst fears, wipe out “real” music. Wood panelling and mutton chops are almost amusing now. And we somehow managed to colour-correct our way out of avocado green and harvest gold kitchen appliances — without suffering too much long-term trauma.
But I draw the line at leaf blowers.
These irksome devices, which came into their own during the disco era, are perhaps unique among lawn-care implements in that their chief side effect — insufferable noise — is annoying to almost all but those using them, and far exceeds the actual utility of their intended purpose, you know, to move leaves from hither to yon.
The bane of those trying to enjoy a quiet fall weekend outdoors, they are the equivalent of bringing a cannon to a knife fight. Their annual re-emergence is as reliable as the arrival of pumpkin-spice lattes, though these latter autumnal offerings don’t yell incessantly like a car full of six-year-olds.
I should make clear that while leaf blowers started really gaining popularity in North America in the 1970s, their actual origin isn’t so cut and dried.
According to one online history, 19th-century gardeners in Japan used bellows to clear leaves. That history, as well as the website Leaf Blower Guide (I kid you not), points to 1959 as the year when H.L. Diehl, a former Pratt & Whitney jet engine technician (of course), developed what he claimed was the first walk-behind lawn vacuum and leaf blower.
Even before then, though, people were modifying their agricultural fogging machines — crop dusters used to blow pesticides onto plants — and turning them into leaf blowers. It wasn’t until 1971, though, when the Echo PB-9 gas-powered backpack blower was unveiled, that households everywhere could, and did, get in on the act.
Evening Update
And now here we are, our dwindling outdoor-friendly weekend afternoons interrupted by their excessive din and their owners’ inexplicable need to blow stuff around at great volume and speed.
Now, I don’t pretend to understand the specs, but does anyone really need the staggering Newtonian power of the Champion 200938 leaf blower ($699.99 at Canadian Tire), its 224cc engine displacing 1,300 cubic feet of air per minute and spitting out lawn debris at speeds of up to 257 km/h? Are there leaves so massive that their removal requires such a beast?
If so, why not go all out and pick up an Echo PB-9010H ($949 at The Home Depot), which, while only spewing out a paltry 1,110 cubic feet of air per minute, nonetheless does so at speeds of up to 354 km/h, roughly equivalent to that of a Formula-1 car or Level-5 hurricane.
Beware, though: According to Pro Tools Review, the PB-9010H also creates “some” noise — up to 103 decibels at full throttle, or about the same as a car horn five metres away, or Rush’s Geddy Lee singing directly inside your skull.
(If none of this puts you off, you’ll no doubt be excited to learn that The Echo also comes with a variable-speed, hip-mounted throttle with cruise control, though I confess I’m unsure how cruise control works in a backpack-style blower, unless the backpack also doubles as a jetpack).
The gas-powered blowers are the worst culprits, of course, and it’s not just their overblown noise-to-utility ratio that’s so offensive. As many who suffer COPD, pulmonary fibrosis, hay fever or other allergies will tell you, leaf blowers, in addition to the CO, CO2, nitrogen oxides and other harmful pollutants emitted by their gas-powered engines, also kick up all kinds unwelcome matter and particulate, including animal waste, dirt, dust and allergens. Among the 10 steps recommended by the Canadian Lung Association to reduce air pollution is the use of hand-powered garden tools, rather than gas-powered mowers and blowers.
Fortunately, municipalities are waking up to the problem (how could they not, given the deafening cacophony?). With the exception of golf courses, leaf blowers cannot be used in Ottawa between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. on weekdays, and between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. on Saturdays, Sundays and statutory or public holidays. Not that some blowhards don’t start earlier.
Other cities have gone further. In 2022, Washington, D.C. banned all gas-powered leaf blowers, with offenders being fined up to $500 for each violation. Gas-powered leaf blowers were similarly outlawed in Santa Monica, Calif., back in 1991, but the city last year toughened its regulations so that only zero-emission electric leaf blowers with a sound rating of 70 decibels or less are permitted. Meanwhile, city councillors in Oak Bay, B.C., on Vancouver Island, voted in 2022 to phase out all gas-powered residential lawn equipment, including leaf blowers, by 2026.
It’s hard to imagine that Ottawa, which declared a climate emergency in 2019 and three years later got schooled in the harms of needless noise pollution when truckers showed up, engines revving and horns blaring, won’t one day follow suit.
In the meantime, I’ll guess I’ll go inside, close the door and put on some disco: “Feel the city breakin’ and everybody shakin’ and you’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive … ” Pass the earbuds.
