What about the health care costs for the community?

When we talk about the costs of choosing to either keep or eliminate gas blowers, we often forget who really pays. Every resident and worker bears the indirect costs of gas blowers.

Here are facts about how air and noise pollution increase health care costs. CO2 along with fine particulates and nitrogen oxides from gas leaf blowers aggravate asthma and heart disease. Those pollutants translate into hospital visits, missed workdays, damaged lives, and premature deaths. And, as Penn Environment has reported, our county has the worst emissions in the state.

The World Economic Forum reported that health-related air pollution costs U.S. communities $820 billion annually in economic losses. Applied proportionally to our township’s population, that’s $35 million per year. Yes, $35 million a year in hidden social cost—borne through insurance premiums, medical bills, and lower worker productivity. None of that shows up in a landscaper’s invoice, but it does land on our collective balance sheet.

Noise has its own price. The World Health Organization in 2023 calculated that chronic exposure above 55 decibels outdoors shortens average healthy life expectancy due to the cumulative toll of lost sleep, stress, and cardiovascular strain. Community-wide savings from noise reductions are tangible: fewer ER visits, improved school performance, greater productivity for those working from home, and higher property values because people want quiet neighborhoods.

Landscapers fear that a prohibition against gas blowers will cost them money, but keeping gas blowers costs everyone. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 2024 found that for every $1 invested in emissions reduction, municipalities save $5 in avoided health-care and lost-productivity costs within five years.

A modest short-term investment prevents exponentially greater costs over time. Protecting public health and well-being isn’t only a moral choice—it’s a fiscally responsible one. When we reduce toxic emissions and noise, we reduce hidden taxes on everyone’s health and productivity. 

THIS INVISIBLE POPULATION

The people who bear the most extended exposure to these machines are the landscape workers, many of them undocumented. Reverend Maria McCabe testifies before the Select Board of Acton MA