New York Proposal 2, the Environmental Rights Amendment, is on the ballot in New York as a legislatively referred constitutional amendment on November 2, 2021.
A "yes" vote supports adding a right to clean water, clean air, and a healthful environment to the New York Constitution's Bill of Rights.
New York Proposal 2, Environmental Rights Amendment (2021)
Gas-Powered Leaf Blowers: the End is Nigh
This is a one-time post to pull together resources, links, and info on a topic I’ve followed for a long time. Check out the two photos below. One, of chronic congestion on freeways in my Southern California homeland. The other, of familiar modern “gardening” practices. Which do you think is overall a greater contributor to certain kinds of air pollution, carcinogenic emissions, lung disease, and hearing loss, in our nation’s most populous state?
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The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All the Leaf Blowers
“Using a two-stroke engine is like heating your house with an open pit fire in the living room — and chopping down your trees to keep it going, and trying to whoosh away the fetid black smoke before your children are poisoned by it.”
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GAS-POWERED LEAF BLOWERS ARE HAZARDOUS!
EXTREME NOISE – their high-decibel, low-frequency noise disrupts communities and contributes to hearing loss and hypertension.
HEALTH RISKS – their toxic emissions and fine particulates increase risks of cancer, lung disease, heart disease, and dementia.
ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS – their toxic waste and smog-forming emissions harm ecosystems and contribute to the climate crisis.
Montclair passes law sharply limiting gas-powered leaf blowers
New York Senate Bill S1113
Senator John Liu is currently sponsoring New York Senate Bill S1113 to prohibit the use of gas-powered leaf and lawn blowers from May first and September thirtieth.
Gas-powered leaf blowers pollute the environment in 3 ways: exhaust emissions, noise, and particulates/dust blown into the air. Per the Department of Environmental Conservation website: "Emissions from gas-powered leaf blowers are substantial. The amount of CO (carbon monoxide) emitted from a typical backpack leaf blower for just 1 hour is equal to CO coming from the tailpipe of a current year automobile operating for over 8 hours. For the other pollutants, the amounts are even greater."
This bill aims to cut down on the careless usage of leaf blowers by restricting their usage as a landscaping tool in the non-fall months. SIGN UP FOR NOTIFICATIONS OR READ MORE HERE >
Five Mistakes You're Making with Your Hydrangeas
Hydrangeas are shrubs that boast huge, vibrant clusters of small florets that bloom from late spring until fall and are incredibly easy to grow. Their ease makes them a popular choice among those with green thumbs and those who are new to gardening, alike. But despite that ease it's still possible for home gardeners to make mistakes with hydrangeas. Here are five mistakes you might be making with this flowering shrub—and how to correct them. READ MORE HERE >
Different wake-up call | Awake now to issue of leaf blowers
The noise, and the noxious fumes, override the wonder of the devices for many. In recent years, there’s been a growing effort to ban motorized leaf blowers — those with two-stroke engines, the ones where you mix oil with the gas and then leave a plume behind you. Washington, D.C., did so in 2018, making the use of gas-powered leaf blowers a no-no inside that city’s limits, effective in 2022. READ MORE HERE >
The Pros and Cons of Laying Down Mulch
When gardeners think of applying fall mulch, their thoughts typically turn to that extra layer that protects plants in cold regions from the ravages of a hard winter. But you can apply fall mulch just like you do in spring, adding enough to refresh what’s broken down. Many landscaping professionals actually practice—and prefer—fall mulching. Fall mulch works like spring mulch to retain soil moisture, suppress weed growth... READ MORE HERE>
Seasonal Hazard for Working at Home: Noxious Leaf Blowers
Workers at home are frazzled by the sounds of the suburbs, with offensive leaf blowers at the top of the noise complaint pile. Millions of American workers last spring thought the silver lining of quarantine would at least be exchanging the hustle and bustle of the office for the relative peace and quiet of home. Then yard work season began.
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16 Smart Gardening Tips and Tricks
Start your gardening journey by understanding the soil you're working with. After you determine what will grow best and when one of our most rewarding tips is to start at the seed and watch as your hard work takes root. It not only feels amazing to see your plant prowess pay off but also offers invaluable insight into your soil for future planting and landscaping. Read More Here >
Leaf Blowers Are Loud, Ugly And Dangerous. The Fumes Increase The Risk Of Cancer And Heart Disease.
Leaf blowers also pose a severe threat to the living leaves still attached to trees and bushes—collateral damage from blowers aimed at the ground. Air blasts of up to 200 miles an hour can demolish the habitats of bees and other insects and small creatures, which are essential to their ecosystems. The dead leaves that blowers target also help prevent moisture from evaporating at trees’ bases, and nourish the soil that sustains plant life.
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Huntington CALM (Clean Alternative Landscaping Methods)
A Smarter Fall Cleanup
We now know that an overly aggressive approach to cleaning up in autumn can damage the environment. When we mow over, shred or vacuum up leaves, or rake them away from the tree they fell from, we diminish the potential good that the leaves and their various inhabitants — all essential players in the food web — can do.
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How a small group of activists got leaf blowers banned in D.C.
...gas-powered leaf blowers, lawn mowers, and similar equipment... produce more ozone pollution than all the millions of cars in California combined. Two-stroke engines are that dirty. Cars have become that clean. Leaf blowers are especially insidious... and gas-powered blowers produce far more “sound energy” in the low-frequency range. This may seem benign but it has a surprising consequence. READ MORE HERE >
How Bad For The Environment Are Gas-powered Leaf Blowers?
A 2011 test by the car experts at Edmunds showed that “a consumergrade leaf blower emits more pollutants than a 6,200 pound 2011 Ford F150 SVT Raptor.” The company subjected a truck, a sedan, a fourstroke and a twostroke leaf blower to automotive emissions tests and found that under normal usage conditions — alternating the blower between high power and idle, for example — the twostroke engine emitted nearly 299 times the hydrocarbons of the pickup truck and 93 times the hydrocarbons of the sedan. The blower emitted many times as much carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides as well. The fourstroke engine performed significantly better than the twostroke in most of the categories, but still far worse than the car engines. READ MORE HERE >
Meanwhile, in the Suburbs: Leaf Blower Drama
Leaf blowing, a grating soundtrack of the season, faces new scrutiny as noise complaints from cooped-up neighbors rise. The coronavirus pandemic may have accomplished what years of complaining, eye-rolling and window slamming could not in suburban New York: silencing leaf blowers, their loud motors further rattling nerves and perhaps... spreading the virus. READ MORE HERE >
Dr Andrew Weil: BAN LEAFBLOWERS!
When it comes to really bad ideas, the leafblower ranks right up there with adding lead to gasoline and using CFCs in aerosols. Leafblowers are diabolical machines. Even if the claims their promoters make for them were true, the damage leafblowers do outweighs such meager benefits by many, many orders of magnitude. Leafblowers literally scour the earth: stripping off topsoil, desiccating roots, and killing vital soil-dwelling organisms, while, at the same time, propelling into the air clouds of dirt, dust and dangerous contaminants: volatile compounds, mold and fungal spores, weed seeds, insect eggs, pollen, molecules of the myriads of toxic chemicals people spray and sprinkle on their gardens, trees, and lawns, not to mention bird and rodent feces.
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