Tag Archives: leaf blowers

Leaf Bowers

Sign the Inman Park Leaf Blower Petition

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Gas-Powered Leaf Blowers in Inman Park

Residents of Inman Park in Atlanta, Georgia, should voluntarily restrict their use of gas-powered leaf blowers (GLB) to the following times and days: 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. from Monday to Friday, noon to 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, and not at all on Sunday.

Noise from GLBs is a source of unhappiness and inconvenience for many Inman Park residents. More than that, GLB noise can damage human health as well. The CDC, the EPA, and OSHA all identify leaf blowers as a source of harmful noise. Among the people most at risk are those who work from home, people who work night shifts, children, the retired, the elderly, the sick, and of course the landscape crew itself.

It's not just humans. A scientific study in 2018 found that the noise we humans generate affects wildlife, too. It alters stress hormones in birds, for example. One consequence is that chicks nearer to noise tend to be smaller, with poorer feather development.

Other negative effects of GLBs are well documented, especially with regard to air pollution. You could drive your car, with its efficient pollution-control technology, all the way to California, and you still wouldn't come close to producing the same amount of certain pollutants as GLBs create in the course of an ordinary day of leaf-blowing in Inman Park.

Alternatives to GLBs exist. A battery-powered blower is one example. More and more yard maintenance companies are going all-electric, including in Atlanta. Moreover, hundreds of cities and towns have already adopted restrictions on the use of GLBs.

By signing this petition, you are pledging to limit your GLB use (if any) to the specified days and hours, and you are encouraging others to abide by these modest, voluntary restrictions as well.

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Leaf Bowers

Gas-Powered Leaf Blowers

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There are earlier posts of mine about gas-powered leaf blowers: read them here and  here. Washington, D.C., recently enacted a ban on gas-powered leaf blowers, to take full effect by 2022. The journalist James Fallows and his wife Deb were among a small group of neighborhood activists who started working toward this in 2015. You can read here a short article by Fallows at The Atlantic with links to additional information.

Education

Education

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Which of these is false?

  1. Lake Claire’s tree canopy is currently twice as dense as Inman Park’s, and taking into consideration how much of Inman Park is “non-vegetative land cover,” Tree Watch is limited to about half the total area of the neighborhood when it is looking for places to plant trees.
  2. A recent study in Portland found that a single shade tree increases a homeowner’s property value by an average $7,130, while street trees add $8,870, on average, to a house’s sale price.
  3.  A two-stroke, gas-powered leaf blower releases into the air about 300 times the hydrocarbons of a heavy-duty pickup.
  4. In the front yard of a house on Elizabeth Street is a 70-foot tall, multi-trunk redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) — a Pacific coast redwood, that is, roughly 2,700 miles distant from the California forests where it has its true home, and which is said to be comprised of the suckers that sprouted from the stump of a tree planted by Joel Hurt himself!!!
  5. There is absolutely no connection between knowing more about the natural world and caring more about the natural world.

If you chose #5, congratulations!

Tree Watch needs your help in identifying topics, issues, speakers, experts, activities, venues, media outlets, and so forth, to educate Inman Park residents about the critically important work we must do to ensure that Atlanta remains a city with an environment that is supportive of human health and prosperity. Contact us!