Leaf blowers beware! NC man is leading a nationwide push against noise.

One of the pleasures of fall in North Carolina is that you can open your windows and let in fresh air.

But there’s a price. Noise comes in as well: lawnmowers, jackhammers, sirens, stereos, motorcycles, horns, loud cars and the most invasive of all – leaf blowers.

Many people working from home during the pandemic have discovered that the neighborhood they once left for a sealed office environment is a lot louder during the day, especially when they’re on a Zoom call.

But there’s hope. North Carolina is home to a guardian for your ears. Ted Rueter of Durham is the founder and director of Noise Free America: A Coalition to Promote Quiet. He has battled unnecessary noise for 20 years since he began his campaign while teaching political science at UCLA. His group has grown to 50 chapters and 2,000 members.

Rueter, who now teaches online for the University of Maryland Global Campus, plans a lobbying trip to Washington, D.C., next year. His group will press Congress to restore the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Noise Abatement and Control. The office was de-funded in 1981 under President Reagan. Rueter said 40 members of Congress have signed onto legislation – The Quiet Communities Act – that would revive the office and the fight against noise pollution.

Noise is exhausting and aggravating, Rueter said, but turning down the sound isn’t just about quieting an annoyance. Studies have shown that excessive noise is bad for our health. It can disrupt sleep, increase blood pressure, contribute to heart disease and may be linked to dementia.

“A lot of people think noise is a nuisance, and it is,” Rueter said, “but it’s also detrimental and that’s not widely known.”

Hearing loss is the third most common health problem in the nation after heart disease and arthritis. Approximately 40 million adults have a hearing loss because of noise exposure, according to the American Academy of Audiology.

Rueter, who gets an auditory checkup every six months at Duke, says his hearing has been diminished by the cacophony of modern life. While noise is part of daily life, he thinks too much of it is unnecessary. For instance, he says, stores don’t really need to play music, action movie trailers don’t need to blast you with explosions and cars don’t need to be rolling boomboxes.

Leaf blowers draw Rueter’s strongest objection. “I have seen leaf blowers used to track down a single cigarette butt in a parking lot,” he said. Most of that noise, he said, is a pointless shifting of dirt and leaves: “They’re just moving it around. They don’t put it away. They come back a few days later and move it around again. It’s insane.”

Some states and cities are getting the message. To cut air and noise pollution, Washington, D.C., has banned gas-powered leaf blowers starting on Jan. 1, 2022. California lawmakers have passed a similar ban.

On a broader basis, however, governments have largely surrendered in the fight against noise pollution. Federal noise pollution measures are mostly ignored and enforcement has fallen to states and cities, which also take little action. It has been almost 50 years since public annoyance with noise was captured by the famous Midas Muffler commercial: “Your muffler – fix it!”

In Raleigh, there are signs of change. Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin said she has asked the city’s new police chief to quiet excessively loud music in the South Glenwood entertainment district and enforce ordinances against loud cars and motorcycles.

That’s better than the response Rueter got when he wrote to Durham’s city manager proposing a ban on gas-powered leaf blowers. It was one time he didn’t welcome silence. He heard nothing back.

This story was originally published October 4, 2021 at 4:00 AM.