Why Are Leaf Blowers So Irritating?

If the sound of leaf blowers makes you angry, you're not alone -- and there's science behind why.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Lauren Vogel bomb here Ah, the sounds of autumn, the
satisfying crunch of a crisp apple or fallen leaves under
your feet, or the teeth grinding noise of a leaf
blower powered by electric or gasoline motors that propel air
out of a nozzle to send leaves and grass cuttings.

(00:23):
Flying leaf blowers are probably the most villainized devices in
the lawn care universe due to the noise that they admit.
In the mid nineteen seventies, when leaf blowers became ubiquitous
in the United States, to California, cities adopted early bands
of the equipment, Caramel by the Sea and Beverly Hills
labeled the leaf blowers a noise nuisance and banned their use,
a move that has been followed by hundreds of other

(00:45):
cities across the United States to some degree. But what
is it about leaf blowers that people hate? Is it
the decibels the constancy? The leaf blowers pose real dangers
to the health of users or others who happened to
be within earshot. Increasingly, the answer appears to be yes
to all of the above. Leaflowers may send leaves and
long clippings for a ride, but the gusts, which reach

(01:06):
a hundred and eighty to two hundred and eighty miles
per hour that's about two hundred nine four hundred and
fifty kilometers per hour, also create a nose clogging swirl
of fungi, spores, herbicides, and microbes. The resulting dust is
so aggravating to people with allergies asthma, bronchitis, and other
respiratory maladies that the American Lung Association recommends staying away

(01:27):
from leaf flowers altogether. And then there's the air pollution
operating a commercial leaf blower for one hour, and it's
as much smog forming pollution as you would if you
drove a recent midsize car, as say Toyota camera from
Los Angeles to Denver, which is about a one thousand,
one hundred mile or one tho hundred kilometer trip. That's

(01:47):
because most leaf blowers use two cycle engines. They're lightweight
and inexpensive, but they require a mixture of gasoline and
oil to run. Unlike more complex engines, they don't have
separate chambers for fueling lubricants. When operated, the engine wastes
approximately one third of the combined mixture, releasing carbon monoxide,
nitrous oxide, and hydrocarbons into the air. These three toxins

(02:09):
are some of the main culprits and the air pollution
from leaf blowers. Carbon Monoxide helps form smog. Nitrous oxide
is a prime ingredient in acid rain and has been
linked to global warming. Hydrocarbons are cancer causing organic compounds
that also contribute to smog formation. Plus, leaf blowers are noisy.
How noisy are they When you engage in conversation, that's

(02:29):
a noise level of about sixty deciples, according to the
Center for Hearing and Communication. If you're strolling on a
sidewalk and a car goes by, that's about seventy deciples.
A leaf blower, even at fifty ft or fifteen meters away,
can be up to seventy five deciples, and right up
close that jumps well into the nineties. According to the
World Health Organization, any noise above seventy five decibles risks

(02:50):
causing physical hearing damage. And then there's the mental toll.
Ms Aphonia is a relatively newly classified condition in which
people are angered by particular sounds like chewing or knuckle cracking.
Although leaf blowers aren't mentioned in the diagnosis parameters, it
stands to reason that missophonia may be related to people's
dislike of the machines because they're extra sensitive to sound.

(03:11):
Preliminary data shows that miss aphones brains may have a
hypersensitive connection between the auditory system and the limbic system,
which is the part of the brain that's responsible for
creating emotions. It's so much a part of life or
misophones that they can be shocked when others don't feel
or react the same way to certain noises. But being
irritated by leaf blowers doesn't necessarily mean you're asaphone. Erica Walker,

(03:32):
a doctoral student at Harvard University's chance School of Public Health,
discovered that it is far less irritating to create a
sound than it is to hear it. In a survey
of one thousand fifty residents and more than a dozen
Boston neighborhoods, Walker found that the majority of respondents said
they couldn't control or get away from noises like leaf blowers,
and they believed that no one really cared that it

(03:53):
annoyed them. What's more, other research has shown that leafblowers
emit a low frequency noise that penetrates through outer wall
into homes and businesses in a way that some other
noises passing vehicles, for example, do not. However, leaf blowers
have become an integral part of commercial lawn care. While
a leaf blower may sound like fingernails across chalkboard to you,
for the businesses that rely on them for a portion

(04:14):
of their livelihood, it's probably music to the ears. Today's
episode was written by Laurie L. Dove and produced by
Tristan McNeil. For more on this and tons of other
sensory topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com.