Walnut Creek has banned gas-powered leaf blowers.
Noise is the obvious pollutant that many focus on, but emissions from 2-stroke engines are startlingly toxic, including a mix of:
- Carcinogens (benzene, PAHs)
- Lung irritants (PM2.5, NOx)
- Toxic gases (CO)
- Smog-forming chemicals (VOCs, hydrocarbons)
Best is not to use leaf blowers at all (they lift topsoil into the air), but battery is orders of magnitude less harmful.
@schwa @wklj
Better would of course be to use a battery “generator”.
After having done a bit of investigation: For most corded blowers it should work OK with a ~2000Wh battery. It’s a larger up-front cost ($1500–$2000), and you'd just about break even by the time the battery reaches its duty cycle limit.
Hopefully this will improve as battery prices continue to decline.
@wklj
🤦♂️
Of course, that largely defeats the point, but from the perspective of pollutants it's actually a significant improvement — emissions from a mostly steady-state 4-stroke engine (generator) are generally (much) lower than the 2-stroke engine.
This is especially true for hydrocarbons where the 2-stroke basically jets out about a third of its fuel unburned. The generator probably emits more NOx.
mmalc
Bill Lloyd
Jonathan Wight