Clean and Quiet Yard Care

How to Make the Switch

• Ask your yard care provider to use electric equipment
• Seek an electric yard care provider
• Purchase your own electric equipment
• Share electric equipment with neighbors
• Go manual! Use a push mower and rake by hand (studies show no significant difference in time efficiency)
• Let your yard care provider know that gas-powered equipment is harmful to their health (both hearing and lungs)
• Share this flier with neighbors and landscapers.
• Add your name to our list of concerned Curtis Park neighbors – join our email list BELOW

Leaf Blower Pollution

Air Pollution Effects on Kids

The City of Sacramento Noise Ordinance specifies that:

• Leaf blowers – gas and electric – must cease operation while the air quality index established by Sac Metro Spare the Air is 101 or higher.
• Gas-powered leaf blowers may only operate from 9 a.m. – 6 p.m. Monday thru Saturday and 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. on Sundays
• Noises levels may not exceed 65 decibels at a distance of 50 feet; most gas powered equipment exceeds this level but there is no current enforcement

Noise from gas equipment is harmful to hearing…

• Gas-powered mowers and blowers range from 80-100+ decibels; a jet take off is 100 decibels
• Gas blowers measuring 70-75 decibels at 50 feet can reach 90-100 decibels at the operator’s ear and to those nearby
• Exposure to 80-92 decibels for two hours can cause hearing damage
• Gas leaf blowers are damaging to plants…
• Leaf blowers operate at 170 MPH – hurricane force winds – disruptive to plants and biota
• Blowers erode beneficial mulch and bark around trees and landscaping and stir up allergens, mold and dust contributing to allergies

• Quiet Communities 
• American Green Zone Alliance
• Get Off My Lawn, How a small group of activists (our correspondent among them) got leaf blowers banned in the nation’s capital By James Fallows in The Atlantic
• Neighbor Kim Alexander’s Facebook post on the decibel sound difference between a gas-powered and an electric blower in Curtis Park. The decibel scale is logarithmic, therefore a small difference in decibels can mean a much larger difference in noise levels.
• Contact SCNA Neighborhood Concerns Committee members Kathy Les, Bruce Pierini, John Mathews, or Dan Pskowski.
• Local electric-only landscapers: Terrae Causa, Fresh Air Yardcare (no longer accepting new clients), Contact Kathy Les to be added to this list.