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Comment by mrfredward | Hacker News Reader

>Noise, they have come to understand, is the secondhand smoke of this era.

Most of the author's points about sound come down to hand waving and weasel wording. He says hearing loss is "coming up fast on the list" of public health problems (a meaningless assertion), and then he never presents evidence that leaf blowers are a significant cause of this. He started with the conclusion (leaf blowers make an annoying sound), and then did his best to argue the sound that annoys him should be illegal.

On the other hand, he's right that 2 stroke engines are dirty as hell, and his statistics to that ends are a bit more convincing.

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> Most of the author's points about sound come down to hand waving and weasel wording.

It's not complicated - people don't like loud annoying noises and air pollution.

No weasel words in that.

I understand the noise complaint, I work from home and I hear them all week as my various neighbor's gardeners arrive throughout each day. That said... I have an electric one that is awesome and it's much quieter than the 2-stroke I used to have. Leaf blowers do serve a purpose but the electric ones are a great improvement on noise and pollution.

Indeed leaf blowers produc one of the most distracting and annoying sounds when working from home

Ya, it's not as much of a problem at the office because you maybe hear one leaf blower all week. At home, it's 1-2 per day. When they come do my lawn, it's always while I'm on the phone.

But, it is possible to measure the intensity of sound and how much that contributes to hearing loss. CDC has a handy chart on the effects of noise here: https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/hearing_loss/what_noises_cause_hear... . The existence of other sources of noise loud enough to damage hearing does not preclude banning leaf blowers.

Sound pressure levels are dependent on distance. A leaf blower might expose you to 90dB if you're using it, but someone stood 10 metres away would only be exposed to 70dB, which is well below the threshold for damage.

exposed to 70dB, which is well below the threshold for damage.

70 dBA is at the threshold for hearing damage (65-70 dBA range). It's below the OSHA limit of 85 dBA, but that is not the threshold for hearing damage, it's the threshold for acceptable [0] hearing damage.

[0] where "acceptable" means that a person exposed to 85 dBA for an average of 40-hrs per week for 10 years can still understand conversational speech in an ideal environment.

Interesting. Is there any reliable way to tell db noise from headphones? For example, apple airpods on an iphone.

you could certainly buy a sound level meter and measure the output from your headphones at your usual volume setting. you would probably not like what you learned, though. as a rule of thumb, any sound that requires you to raise your voice to have a conversation over is loud enough to damage your hearing. most people don't like to listen to music at safe levels.

So basically you should be able to have a conversation with headphones on?

Or it is slightly different, since music in ear is more distracting than ambient music? (Ie. hear your own voice clearly with headphones on)

I often do a "can I hear my normal speaking voice?"check with headphones in as a way to see if they're quiet enough. But that might not be the right standard.

Watch the video. It's only a few minutes long and is a lot more precise.

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