And their two-stroke engines are a big source of particulate in the air.

I have an irrational hatred of leaf blowers. Are they even significantly more efficient than a rake?

They're very effective at blowing around clouds of dust and removing topsoil from yards and gardens here in CA.

I’m so glad that someone else is aware of this.

Not many people realize that leaf blowers remove a ton of top soil from grass and tree roots. It does a ton of damage to so many plants. All those exposed roots we often see should not be exposed that way.

The commercial lawn and tree trimming in Southern California is almost criminal what they do in the name of “landscape maintenance”.

We rented a house for several years, and the summer we moved in we told the landlord that the sprinkler system wasn't working right, and we wouldn't be using it to water the lawn.

The yard guys our landlord hired proceeded to blow all the topsoil off the yard that summer, and even when I tried to re-seed the lawn, it was impossible because they'd just come by every week and blow everything around. One time we were cooling off a birthday cake outside when the yard guys came and it almost got covered with dust when they arrived unannounced on a day they didn't normally come.

Leaf blowers are awful, noisy, and mostly don't do anything useful - unless you're ACTUALLY moving around fallen leaves.

I don't see the need to label your hatred as irrational. Just about everyone hates them (including leaf blower owners!), and seems quite rational to me.

Yes, but the much quieter, battery powered electric ones are lighter and more powerful. Anyone not using electric leaf blowers at this point is just being a cheapskate. And considering the lower or nearly non-existent maintenance, they aren't even being a good cheapskate.

Anyone in a position to do so should require in their lawn care contract that only electric leaf blowers or none at all must be used.

Much faster than a rake depending on what you use them for. We use them to clear driveways and pathways all the time where I live in the bay area - you'd be spending 30+ minutes for a 1 minute job with a leaf blower.

I prefer the 1 minute of leaf blower versus the 30+ minutes of hearing a rake. Rakes are pretty loud too.

fortunately places are starting to ban them.