The Vancouver City Council should consider an ordinance which regulates leaf blowers. The two-cycle gasoline engines used in most blowers are incredibly polluting, because they burn a mixture of oil and gas and spew about 50 percent of it into the air.
The second major drawback to these machines is the noise, which is bad both for any user without ear protection and bad for people nearby. There is no statewide regulation, which suggests that council action would not be pre-empted. James Fallows, who writes for The Atlantic, recently discussed the ultimate success of getting an ordinance passed in Washington, D.C. Our council should address this issue this summer, before leaf season comes again to Vancouver.
