About — Blown Away

What we are trying to do

The conventional public framing of residential noise is that it is an annoyance — something reasonable adults tolerate. The medical and acoustical literature treats sustained ambient noise as a documented driver of cardiovascular disease, sleep architecture fragmentation, immune impairment, metabolic disruption, and cognitive decline. The two framings disagree, and the gap between them is what this site is built to close. The work is editorial: here is the evidence, here is what it means, here is what has been done about it elsewhere, here is what can be done about it.

Editorial line

Sourced where the literature is firm. WHO Europe noise guidance for the dose-thresholds. Peer-reviewed cardiovascular and sleep-architecture literature for the physiological mechanism. OSHA / NIOSH for occupational exposure standards. California AB 1346 and DC Law 22-281 for the regulatory record. See Sources.
Honest about what is provisional. Some pieces of the argument — the field prevalence of pulsed-white-noise sources in consumer devices, the modulation-rate profiles of specific commercial blower models, the specific dose-response curve for sleep-architecture fragmentation in habituated subjects — are less well-mapped than the headline claims. Pages flag this where it applies.
Plain language. Where a clinical or acoustical term is unavoidable, it is defined inline and in the glossary. The audience includes residents, journalists, municipal staff, legislators, and the workers operating the equipment — none of whom should have to translate jargon to use the site.
Not a forum, not a comment system, not a database of named operators or properties. The site does not host user-generated content. The argument is general, not directed at any individual person or company.
Not a substitute for medical, legal, or policy advice. Specific situations need specific professionals.

Who it is for

Residents trying to make sense of why chronic exposure to lawn equipment feels physically harmful even when their neighbors say it shouldn’t.
Workers who operate the equipment and want to understand what years of exposure are doing to them.
Clinicians looking for a clean public-health summary to give patients with noise-related cardiovascular or sleep complaints.
Municipal staff and legislators evaluating whether to introduce gas-powered leaf-blower restrictions in their jurisdictions, who want a single page that pulls together the WHO data, the regulatory precedent, and the worker-safety angle.
Journalists and advocates who need a sourced reference to point readers at.

What it isn’t

A general environmental site — the scope is specifically noise pollution, with the gas-powered backpack blower as the headline case.
A diagnostic tool — nothing here will tell you whether your specific symptoms are noise-related; that is a clinician’s job.
A directory of named landscape companies, individuals, or properties.
An anti-landscaping site. The substitute equipment exists and the substitute equipment works. The argument is for a transition, not a shutdown.

How to use it

Read the Health page first; it establishes the physiological mechanism. Then Habituation, which addresses the most common objection (“people get used to it”). Then Sound for the technical core, Blowers for the equipment-specific case, and Policy + Workers for the regulatory and labor dimensions. Mitigation is for residents who need defenses now while the policy argument develops.

Corrections

If a citation is wrong, a regulation has changed, or a claim is overstated, the site is updated promptly. Reach out via the email on the sources page.