Gasoline-powered leaf blowers are a severe detriment to quality of life in New York City.  In our neighborhood in the Bronx, during warm weather they are here several times weekly, for several hours each time.  While they are in use, toxic gas and oil fumes come into our apartment, not to mention into the lungs of the lawn-care workers, and the noise makes any activity in the apartment impossible.  You can't talk on the phone, you can't watch TV, you cannot do anything productive with the 100Db low-frequency whine of the leafblowers going on.

Lawn-care companies have two options.  If they must have leaf blowers, there are now highly efficient, and much quieter, battery-operated models.  There are also rakes, which, I can tell you from my teenage years, work perfectly well.  The current working model, with its two-stroke engine, of course harms local residents, but most of all harms the mostly black and brown lawn workers who inhale the fumes from less than a foot away with no respirator.

California has already banned these devices, which, before they were banned, contributed more to air pollution in that state than all their autos combined.  The cities of Bronxville, Dobbs Ferry, Great Neck Estates, Greenberg, Larchmont, New Rochelle, Oyster Bay, Russell Gardens, Sleepy Hollow, Tarrytown, Thomaston Village, Village of Tuckahoe, White Plains, and Yonkers have also banned them, not to mention many municipalities in New Jersey.  It's time for New York City to ban these devices within the city limits - they have no place here.