Somewhere this morning a man with a two-stroke engine strapped to his back is out-polluting the pick-up he arrived in.
That comparison comes from the state’s own air quality regulator. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) sized up the best-selling commercial leaf blower against a new light-duty passenger car and calculated that one hour on the blower produces about as much smog-forming pollution as driving that car roughly 1,100 miles. Los Angeles to Denver, give or take. Fifteen hours of freeway, matched by one worker clearing a footpath before morning tea.
Run the same calculation on a commercial lawn mower and the figure drops to about 300 miles, roughly LA to Las Vegas. That makes the blower, on that measure, nearly four times dirtier than the mower, out of an engine light enough to lift with one hand.
What the 1,100 miles is actually counting
Two things get lost every time this statistic goes for a walk…