Dear Friends and Community of Toronto,
An update and request:

I am posting this bulletin to provide you with an update because you may be one of over 100 people who took the time to add your name to the letter that I sent to the Toronto Environment Office at City Hall or who sent your own letter at their request for input in December 2009.

Specifically the City was asking for our views on gas powered leaf blowers and other small engine equipment. This is part of the City’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions including the possibility of banning or restricting use of these highly polluting two-stroke engines. They emit a high level of carcinogenic pollutants because the process causes partially combusted fuel products to discharge into the air (butadiene, formaldehyde, and benzene) emitting as much as 498 times as many hydrocarbons and 26 times as much carbon monoxide as a car (according to a report from the Medical Officer of Health, 2001).

The issue of banning or restricting these engines was supposed to go to City Council for a vote this April and you may have been expecting to hear the results this month. As we might have predicted, the Council is distracted by the Mayoral Election this fall and the City Manager has asked that this issue not be put before Council until Feb. 2011. Additionally I understand from the Senior Environmental Planner that a ban is unlikely and the best we can hope for will be to reduce the emissions.

While this is discouraging, two positive things have occurred. Firstly, the Toronto Environment Office is setting up a working group to draft a proposed landscape industry low-emission accreditation and training program recognizing that these emissions pose a true health risk to Torontonians. If supported by City Council, this would require landscapers to demonstrate that their equipment meets Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards and their workers would receive training on how to operate the equipment to minimize emissions. This committee will include representatives from the landscape industry, city staff and Toronto residents. I will be on this committee and will let you know more as we move forward. Secondly, new equipment is much cleaner so we hope to put systems in place to accelerate the manufacture and use of new technology that meets EPA standards.

What can you do?

Encourage friends and family not to hire landscapers who use gas powered leaf blowers but if they cannot be persuaded to go for the ideal of “zero emissions” they can clean up their act by requesting that their landscaper demonstrate that their equipment meets EPA standards (manufactured in 2007 or later with a decibel level of 65 bBA or less) and is a 4 stroke engine, not a 2 stroke engine.

I will keep you posted as we make progress on designing an accreditation program for the landscape industry and education for Toronto residents on this serious source of carcinogenic emissions. We will also be looking for contacts in Resident’s Associations and the community at large to spread the word when the time comes to take this to Council for a vote.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or input regarding this process.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Joannah Lawson

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