Ban those blasted leaf blowers: JOHN HUMPHRYS declares war on the noisy autumnal curse By John Humphrys For The Daily Mail Here I am sitting at my desk looking at the council tennis courts in front of my house. Itâ€™s noon, but the sky is grey, threatening and heavy enough to crush the spirits of a born-again evangelist. Itâ€™s quiet. Too quiet. Then they come. Two men. Vast weapons strapped low on their lean hips, narrowed eyes assessing their target. They stride onto the tennis courts, pull their masks down and I lunge across my desk. Just in time. Seconds after my earplugs are in place, it begins. First, one man blasts the still air and then the other. A bit melodramatic, you think? Maybe. This is, after all, genteel West London rather than the Wild West, and my gunslingers are council workers in safety helmets and hi-viz jackets clearing leaves from the tennis courts rather than baddies with ten-gallon hats and six guns. Itâ€™s how they get rid of the leaves thatâ€™s the problem. Leaf blowers simply redistribute garden waste, propelling them into the air with great forceÂ I have already had one showdown with my council. A year ago, some town hall genius decided the perfect time to fire up the blowers in my square was 7am on Sunday mornings. My neighbours and I begged to differ. With the help of sympathetic councillors, who also enjoyed their Sunday lie-ins, we won. But it has proved a hollow victory. From the fall of autumnâ€™s first leaf, the blowers have seldom been silent. Maybe you have never suffered this autumnal curse and have no problem with leaf-blowers. Perhaps you donâ€™t mind the calm of your neighbourhood being shattered. Itâ€™s even possible you think the damn things are necessary. Well, letâ€™s deal with that first. They are not. A few centuries ago, someone invented a brilliant device: a long pole with bristles attached to one end. They called it a broom. It has been refined over the years, but it serves the same purpose for which it was designed. It sweeps up fallen leaves into nice neat piles so they can be collected and dumped elsewhere. Leaf-blowers cannot do that. The clue is in the name. They blow leaves. They redistribute them. They shift them from one place to another. In fact, they are extremely good at that. If you are a little leaf just lying there quietly you stand no chance. You and all your companions will be swept up into the air with great force and deposited somewhere else. What they cannot do is blow the leaves into nice neat piles so that they can be taken away. For that you need a broom or, if weâ€™re talking grass and borders, that other ingenious invention: a rake. Why do we regard leaves as the mortal enemy?Â Ah, but what about sucking instead of blowing, you say? That way you capture the leaves in a bag and cart them off to dump them. Job done â€" but at a cost in cash and time. If you have anything larger than a pocket-sized garden, you might be tempted by one of the smaller electric vacuum gadgets for a modest 50 quid or so. Donâ€™t be. Youâ€™ll spend the short autumn days emptying the little bag or clearing blockages from the gadget because youâ€™ve made the mistake of sucking up the odd twig as well. If your garden is more like the grounds of Castle Howard, you can probably stretch to a monster vacuum for a couple of thousand quid which will doubtless do the job. But it raises a bigger question: Why? Why do we regard leaves as a mortal enemy that must be dealt with and dealt with now? We have become obsessed with clearing away every little leaf the moment it flutters to the ground. Why not declare a truce on them? The birds enjoy flipping them over on the lawn to find bugs sheltering beneath them and, when the leaves rot a little, the worms wriggle up and pull bits of them down into the earth â€" just as they do with grass clippings in the summer. Free fertiliser. Theyâ€™re even more beneficial in your borders. So bin the blower and go back to the broom. But that still leaves the real culprits: the councils. Since I started thinking about this article, the tennis courts have received three visits from the men with the blowers. In three days. As I type, the latest gang have arrived. To be fair, they have provided some entertainment. On their first visit, itâ€™s true that there were some leaves on the courts â€" albeit not very many â€" but the rain had been tipping down and there were also vast puddles. So they tried blowing the leaves out of the puddles. It was an extraordinary sight: tidal waves of water speckled with leaves being blasted from one end of the courts to the other. And guess what water does when itâ€™s blasted from a puddle. Correct. It flows right back into it again the minute you stop blasting. So let us dispel the myth that the blowers cut the workload and save council tax payersâ€™ money. According to my highly scientific analysis, if it takes one man with a broom and rake one hour to move one small scattering of leaves, it will take two men with blowers the same time to redistribute them. Then they have to get the man with the rake to pile them up and take them away. And we have to pay for the blowers. And their fuel. And, I donâ€™t doubt, the training courses to teach the men how to use them. Which brings me to another factor â€" and I bet you knew it was coming. â€™Elf â€™n safety. Our health and their safety. According to my highly scientific analysis, if it takes one man with a broom and rake one hour to move one small scattering of leaves, it will take two men with blowers the same time to redistribute themÂ Obviously, itâ€™s the person using the blasted blower whoâ€™s at greatest risk, but in the U.S. the American Lung Association has recommended that we should all stay clear of leaf-blowers because of the dangerous dust they dislodge and blow into the air. It contains everything from animal faecal matter to nasty bacteria and mould spores. Then thereâ€™s air pollution. Experts reckon a big blower uses as much petrol in an hour as a car driving 100 miles. And we havenâ€™t touched on the noise yet. Experts say anything above 85 decibels can damage hearing. People operating most blowers are exposed to 90 and above. This helps to explain why so many U.S. towns (mostly in California obviously) have banned leaf-blowers from residential areas and plenty of others are thinking of doing the same. Maybe councils here should follow suit. Or maybe they should take their guidance from Westminster and employ vast numbers of people with scissors to travel the country cutting off leaves. Thatâ€™s only just a joke, by the way. Annabel Honeybun is a gardener contracted by the Palace of Westminster and one of her tasks is precisely that. She cuts leaves off the lime trees in New Palace Yard below Big Ben before they can fall off. A spokesman for the House of Commons said: â€˜The leaves are removed each winter as a more time-efficient alternative to raking.â€™ Miss Honeybun explained that there is more to it than that. They are old trees and this â€˜mini pollardingâ€™ apparently helps them keep their shape. The excellent Woodland Trust is not impressed. Its spokesman said: â€˜One of the few pleasures at this time of year and something that can put a smile on peopleâ€™s faces is our trees showing wonderful autumn colour.â€™ Of course, heâ€™s right. So letâ€™s leave the leaves on the trees in our parks until they are ready to fall off. And when they have, letâ€™s rake them into great big piles and watch our children rustling through them and rolling and jumping in them just for the joy of it. And letâ€™s leave those high-pitched, whining, deafening polluters in the workshop where they belong.