Opinion: Resident supports action to reduce harm from landscaping machines Let me add my voice to the chorus of pleas I have seen in the paper in recent weeks and months to do something about the noise and the effect on our air quality from leaf blowers and, I would add, from other machines driven by the same inefficient and highly polluting small engines. Beyond the noise problem is the air pollution from the exhaust emissions of these engines, with its immediate impact on our breathing and with known effects of air pollution on asthma and lung problems that lead to thousands of deaths nationwide every year.