As community members and physicians with expertise in child health, we offer our personal views on the health-related hazards of gas-powered leaf blowers (GPLBs) for Menlo Park citizens, especially for our children. While the state of California will enforce a ban on the sale of GPLBs in 2024, this will not prevent citizens from using these engines that can last for 20 years or more.
Decades of rigorous scientific research have taught us that environmental pollution disproportionately affect our children. Our training and current practices in the pediatric intensive care unit and operating rooms provides us a constant reminder of why this is the case: babies and children breathe faster than adults, they inhale a larger volume of air when indexed to their body weight, and they spend more time at ground level — crawling, walking or sitting — where many environmental toxins settle.
Most importantly, children’s developing lungs, hearts, and brains are uniquely sensitive to environmental exposures as they mature. Children’s lungs continue to develop and grow alveoli (the gas-exchanging sacs of the lung) at least through the ninth year of life, therefore any toxic exposure experienced today will be amplified on a logarithmic scale in the future.
There are two main drivers of negative health effects from GPLBs: air pollution, both from gaseous chemicals and dust/particulate matter, and noise pollution.
Air Pollution: GPLBs, and all two-stroke engines such as lawn mowers, combust a mixture of oil and gasoline. Unlike cars, they have no exhaust filter or catalytic converters. The emissions contain known and suspected carcinogens such as uncombusted gasoline, benzene, formaldehyde, and ozone. For reference, GPLBs release up to 300 times as much hydrocarbon as most cars and trucks.
Particulate Air Pollution: All leaf blowers work by propelling particulate matter into the air. They propel dust from the ground into the air — and into kids’ lungs — that contains everything from microscopic particles of soil and brake lining powder settled on road surfaces to ground chemicals such as herbicides and pesticides. This particulate matter damages lungs, it’s harmful for everyone today and deleterious for decades to come for the developing lungs of our kids.
Noise Pollution: The motors in GPLBs emit up to 100 decibels of low-frequency noise (greater than 85 decibels is considered dangerous). Research demonstrates that this noise increases blood pressure and the risk of heart attacks and stroke, it impairs development and learning in children, and increases stress hormones like cortisol. It also disrupts critically important sleep as the noise easily passes through windows and walls, even at a distance of 100 feet. You may ask: “Who sleeps at 10 in the morning, as our laws require leaf blowers to be used during daytime?” Our most vulnerable — our babies and small children — rely on this sleep during the day for brain development and growth.
We appreciate that there are important economic, political and societal implications of imposing an immediate ban on GPLB use. We trust the experts in these respective fields to offer a creative and equitable proposal that addresses both the needs of the workforce using the GPLBs and the community who needs their yards and fields kept tidy. While not experts in these areas, we submit that an immediate ban will also help protect the health of the gardeners, workers and Menlo Park citizens using GPLBs, who now inhale the gas and particulate matter as they work. They, too, deserve protection from these environmental toxins.
It is not only the basic function and duty of government to provide clean air, but we believe there is also a clear mandate for our communities to promote a healthy environment for our children. As parents, physicians and Menlo Park residents, we ask our community leaders to carefully consider this issue.
Please note: these concepts have been well summarized and rigorously researched by Leah Elkins in the Menlo Park Environmental Quality Commission agenda item C-2 document from September 22, 2021.
David M. Axelrod, MD, and Elliot Krane, MD, are faculty physicians at Stanford Children’s Health. The opinions expressed do not represent the views of Stanford.
YouTube 'auditor' provoked, pepper-sprayed shopper at Mountain View Costco, police sayApril 8, 2026 12:23 pm
