The Montgomery County Council tabled a bill to ban the sale and use of gas-powered leaf blowers. The council’s balking at measures already enacted in D.C. and elsewhere illustrates the growing lack of leadership in a county once respected and admired for its quiet neighborhoods.
Montgomery County’s current leaf-blower standard leads to frequent violations of the county’s maximum residential daytime noise standard, set at 65 decibels at the receiving noise property. The leaf-blower standard prohibits use of a leaf blower if it emits noise greater than 70 decibels at a distance of 50 feet. Thus, a single leaf blower complying with the leaf-blower standard and used near the fence line violates the residential noise standard — set to protect public health and welfare — roughly 50 feet inside neighbors’ properties. A leaf blower meeting the county’s leaf-blower standard emits much more noise at shorter distances — 88 decibels at six feet, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers “hazardous.” Multiple gas-powered leaf blowers operating on a single property or block create noise greatly in excess of the residential noise standard and cause hearing loss for workers without proper ear protection.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLyxtc2ipqerX2d9c3%2BOaWpoa2FkurC606Cmpp2irnqku9Snq7Jlkpa7brPArGSlnZGbeqO4zrCcq6tf