To the Editor:

The Princeton Council is be complimented for the partial ban on gas leaf blowers. Princeton only permits the use of gas-powered leaf blowers from March 15 to May 15 and October 1 to December 15.

You agree that gas-powered leaf blowers — with exasperating noise, being unhealthy for workers, and a menace to the environment — are bad. What has been learned since you passed the bill in 2021?

Noise: It’s almost impossible to enjoy a quiet moment in our neighborhoods during certain hours of March 15 through May 15 without hearing the blasting of gas leaf blowers, their engines making maddening whines assaulting our ears.

Sound from gas leaf blowers can reach 90 decibels or more and has been shown to exceed the World Health Organization’s recommended daytime standards of 55 amplitude-weighted decibels.

Workers: As disturbing as health and noise issues are from gas leaf blowers for neighbors, harms to landscape workers are exponentially more severe. They face alarming risks to their health, including asthma, cardiovascular disease, other respiratory illnesses, and irreversible hearing loss.

The Environment: According to James Fallows, a former writer for The Atlantic, gas leaf blowers are “vastly the dirtiest and most polluting kind of machinery still in legal use.”

Just one commercial lawn mower running on gas for an hour produces as much smog-causing pollutants as driving 300 miles in a car. Gas leaf blowers are much worse, producing the equivalent pollution of driving 1,100 miles. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates show that lawn and garden equipment powered by fossil fuels released 30 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2020.

Because 170 municipalities have banned gas-powered leaf blowers, there already is a market for electric blowers, which are immensely quieter than gas ones, and their engines generate zero emissions (that’s zero).

Gas-powered leaf blowers have been banned in Washington, D.C., and in Montclair since last year. Seattle will have a full ban by 2025, and West Orange by 2026.

The Town Council of Cambridge, Mass. (home of what university?) recently unanimously voted to move its total gas leaf blower ban from 2027 to 2026.

All the reliable harbingers of spring in Princeton are here — weather warming, flowers blooming, trees budding, and noise galore plus gas fumes proliferating.

You all know the harms of gas-powered leaf blowers. Yet, when compared to hundreds of other communities, why is Princeton’s “law” the weakest? Why do we only prohibit their use in the months when they’re generally not needed? (It’s as if Princeton University banned cheating by its students only in the summer, when there are no classes.)

Mayor Freda and members of the Council, you are asked to totally phase out gas-powered leaf blowers by 2025 and make Princeton quieter and cleaner, eliminate a major source of climate change, and protect laborers who bear the brunt of these harms. Let’s do it soon and completely. 

Milt Lieberman
Nassau Street