Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today's episode is a classic from our archives. It was, in fact, the first brain Stuff episode I ever recorded back in which feels like it was about thirty two years ago. I wanted to run this one again because with fall upon us here in the Northern Hemisphere and the trees starting to change colors and shed their leaves, one of our greatest enemies has
re emerged. The leaf blower. 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. Flying leafblowers are probably the most villainized devices in the lawn care universe
due to the noise that they admit. In the midnightteen seventies, when leaf blowers became ubiquitous in the United dates to California, cities adopted early bands of the equipment, Carmel 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 cities across the United States
to some degree. But what is it about leaf blowers that people hate is that the decibels, the constancy de leaf blowers pose real dangers to the health of users or others who happen to be with an ear shot. Increasingly, the answer appears to be yes to all of the above. Leafblowers may send leaves and long clippings for a ride, but the gusts, which reach a hundred and eighty two hundred eighty miles per hour that's about two d four hundred and fifty kilometers per hour, also create a nose
clogging swirl of fungis, 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 from leaf blowers altogether. And then there's the
air pollution. Operating a commercial leaflower 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 eight hundred kilometer trip. That's 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 fuel and 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 are some of the main culprits in 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, leafblowers are noisy. How noisy are they when you engage in conversation. That's a noise level of about sixty decibels according to the Center for Hearing and Communication. If you're strolling on a sidewalk and a car goes by, that's about seventy decibles. 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 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. Preliminary data shows that missophones brains may have a hyper sensitive 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, a doctoral student at Harvard Uni Versities 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 leafblowers, and they believed that no one really cared that it annoyed them. What's more, other research has shown that leafblowers admit a low frequency noise that penetrates through outer walls 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 of their livelihood, it's probably music to the ears. Today's episode was written by Laurel Dove and produced by Tristan Neil and Tyler clang Are More on this and lots of other topics. Is it how stuff Brooks dot com.
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