Leaf blowers create wind speeds of 150 to 280 mph.
That exceeds the wind speeds of both category-five hurricanes and tornados. Imagine directing that power at the ground beneath your feet.
I would humbly offer that if the slower winds of hurricanes and tornadoes can lift cars and cows, leaf blowers can raise dust and the toxins mixed into the soil.
It’s illegal for me to take garbage from my property and throw it onto your property. If I tossed a bag of lead paint chips or a neurotoxin onto your property, a hazmat team would be called to the scene.
However, it is considered acceptable behavior to use leaf blowers that produce winds in excess of 150 mph to raise dust that may include items such as lead, toxic pesticides and herbicides (which contain carcinogens, probable carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, etc.), animal feces, mold, spores, and heavy metals.
These clouds of dust don’t magically disappear – they float onto other people’s property, through open windows and shower people traveling past. They also settle on lawn furniture, in sandboxes, on kids' climbing structures/toys, etc.
It is therefore not a question of asking your neighbor to stop using leaf blowers – each of us is put in the path of a toxic cloud, whether your immediate neighbor uses one, or someone on the way to your child’s school uses one, or the neighbor of a friend across town uses one.
In addition to moving leaves and grass clippings on the ground, those winds move a lot of other things on the ground, including soil particles. Add pesticides or herbicides to your lawn? Those are getting airborne. Is your soil contaminated with lead? It may be getting airborne. Pollen, mold spores, etc. - all get whipped up into the dust clouds leaf blowers create.
Just how dangerous are these things that leaf blowers put into the air, and how prevalent are they? Those will be topics of future posts.
Your are confusing speed and force. Leaf blowers produce Hurricane speed winds but not Hurricane force winds.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the comment. You may be correct, but if you look at either the Beaufort Scale, the Saffir-Simpson scale or the Enhanced Fujita Scale there is no distinction between "speed" and "force."
DeleteWhile not typically a fan of citing Wikipedia, they do a decent overall job explaining the measurement when they say:
"Most weather agencies use the definition for sustained winds recommended by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which specifies measuring winds at a height of 33 ft (10.1 m) for 10 minutes, and then taking the average. By contrast, the U.S. National Weather Service defines sustained winds as average winds over a period of one minute, measured at the same 33 ft (10.1 m) height."
Cite: http://bit.ly/MBLaak
Obviously a leaf blower with 150-280 mph winds are enough to raise lots of dust and particulate into the air, in addition to move leaves and other debris. Equally obvious, a leaf blower will not knock single-handedly knock down a home or send a cow airborne.
1) If we are going to have a fact-based discussion about this then It's hurricane velocity winds not hurricane force winds.
ReplyDelete2) I want a "Hell No - We Won't Blow" T Shirt perhaps with a leaf blower picture with a red circle and slash over it.
Ted, in Newtonian physics force has a specific meaning (mass times acceleration?), but that's not precisely the meaning that meteorologists use when they refer to "hurricane-force winds." See Jeremy's reply to anonymous above.
DeleteSome of the scales are based on wind speed and some on observable effects, such as trees bending. I don't think any of them take the mass of the air directly into account.
Hurricanes are obviously more forceful than leaf blowers, as Jeremy says. The comparison really is to the effect on a very small area, perhaps only a square foot or two, of these high-force winds.
This effect is far greater than that of all but the most extreme weather conditions.