THE POLLUTION SOLUTION THAT ISN'T: Blowing Away The Fumes of Political Correctness

It is said that laws are made to be broken. In my neighborhood, very few drivers stop at STOP signs or often even at red lights, pedestrians ignore DON'T WALK signs  & people dodge speeding cars in crosswalks, all dangerous violations of the law that seem to bear little or no daily consequences & certainly no citations that I have ever seen.  However, citations or not,  there are serious daily consequences in all cases to the  noise & deadly gas fumes blown into the air we breathe by gas leaf blowers every day, all year. In West Hollywood, a city that bans smoking in most public places for health concerns, with which I thoroughly agree,  on many otherwise beautiful mornings,  I walk out of my home with my dog Zipper, into the smell of gas fumes so strong you can taste them, and the chain saw like noise of gas leaf blowers, so loud that I can't even hear a "Good Morning" from a passing neighbor & fellow dog walker.  Those are not 'good days in the neighborhood"!  And our pets have to breathe this deadly air too.  The gardeners have masks to wear but we do not, nor should we need to.  There were the same serious public health concerns when The West Hollywood City Council enacted this anti gas leaf blower ordinance in 1986 & today nothing has changed. The strongest proponent of this ordinance, then Council Member Alan Viterbi, enumerated specific cases where gas leaf blowers had made people ill, including  a WeHo senior center whose residents complained of dizziness & nausea until the use of  gas leaf blowers was banned by the building.  Although there are many cities that allow the use of vacuums, electric & battery powered leaf blowers, many cities, such as Hermosa Beach, also ban the use of powered leaf blowers of any kind.  They have had no reported violations & everyone appears happy to cooperate & comply. We have convinced WeHo's Ramada Inn Complex & The Chamberlain Hotel to use brooms & rakes only & this is working very well for them.  Their landscaping is immaculate & beautiful at all times. I consider residents who aren't willing to insist that their gardeners use non polluting tools, to be part of the problem & an equal partner in the menace of neighborhood pollution.  The ban of gas leaf blowers is not a rare concept by thinking health conscious occupiers of public office, there are similar or stricter ordinances in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Malibu even with it's wide open spaces, Santa Monica, San Marino, Carmel, Del Mar, Los Angeles & many, many more.  Their reasonable reasons speak for themselves as facts. The oil/gas mixture in these machines is twice as strong as auto engine fuel.  2 gas leaf blowers cause as much pollution as 17 cars, increase the severity of asthma, bronchitis & other lung disease, even as they pollute the system of every living breathing being around them.  51 lbs. of contaminated particle matter per hour is swept high into the air by these machines, including poisonous carbon monoxide, fertilizers, pesticides, & other contaminates that are force fed to us simply by breathing through the many hours that it takes for them to settle back upon the ground.  Gas leaf blower fumes have been called "a silent killer" &  emit 500 times the level of hydrocarbons that a modern auto emits.  And the level of noise pollution can cause more than headaches & nausea. A noise decibel of 80 is considered dangerous (Ca. Air Resources Board) yet gas leaf blowers emit a noise decibel of 95 or higher & have been known to cause accumulative & irreversible hearing damage to their unsuspecting victims.  Seniors, babies & animals are of particular concern since they are they most vulnerable & depend on responsible people to protect their best interests.  Gas leaf blowers are now listed among the main sources of dangerous air pollution yet are one of the easiest to get under control if code enforcement officers were more proactively diligent & more private residents were more conscientious & cooperative.  Or are we satisfied to stand and/or sit  silently by as deafening noise & poisonous gas fumes not only greet us at our front doors but also flow mercilessly through our windows & into our homes? If it makes the cost of gardening & landscaping a little higher for all parties, so be it.  It is up to the gardeners to seek out, buy & use tools that are legal & up to the property owners to only employ gardeners who do so.  How can there possibly be any legitimate excuses for deliberately contaminating the air we breathe with poisons?  There cannot be. I for one do not understand why so many otherwise responsible people turn such a deaf ear & blind eye to such a serious but preventable health concern that affects absolutely everyone. This is not a situation of "ignore it & it'll go away" but a situation of "ignore it at your own peril".  A call to report code violations to WeHo City Hall's Code Enforcement office is an easy way to be involved & to help make City Hall aware of your concern about this ever growing threat to our health. A little responsibility goes a long way in helping to make our air healthier for all living  things.  Good quality air is a right, not a privilege, & more often than  not, we have to fight for our rights.