At My Age I Don’t Have Years to Wait

By Charlie Anteby

I am encouraged to see your writing about the leaf blowers. I do not think your position is anywhere near strong enough, you are way too kind, but it’s a start.

A man my age doesn’t have years to wait for a solution to this problem. I am a member of the most vulnerable population, retired or semi-retired senior citizens who paid their dues over the years, worked hard, and now simply want to enjoy their remaining days enjoying the tranquility of staying home.

The disruption and aggravation from leaf blowers, particularly where I am located, is very much a daily battle. I live on the ocean side of Ocean Ave in Elberon near Park Ave, a/ka/a “Billionaire’s Row” where the homes are all sitting on multiple acres, and the leaf blowing goes on forever and is constant. There are people here who reside three months a year in these ‘summer homes’ and yet have their gardeners come three times a week, summer and winter. They blow and they blow, they come early and they stay for well over an hour.

You neglected to mention in your article that during 11 months of the year there are NO LEAVES to blow!

I do my daily walking by the nearby Takanasee Lake three times around, 2.4 miles total. There are approximately 60 homes around that lake, so if one of them is having their gardener there, it destroys the quiet solitude and serenity of the whole walk for the whole time. Do the math, it’s basically every day, every time. Are we now anti-exercise for senior citizens so that gardeners don’t have to pick up a broom or a rake, while working on homes in the 7 or 8-digit range of value?

I will add that this disregard for voters and this preferred treatment for noise contributing gardeners / landscapers and other noise polluters, over constituents, is a theme in government today from top to bottom. In a more normal world, the mere idea that the laws in place would protect the (noise) polluters over the polluted would be an absurdity, but here we are in 2025 and it’s the new (and tolerated/accepted) normal. Anyone with common sense has to realize this is a travesty, it’s despicable, and that we can’t blame the noise makers – we need to direct the blame squarely where it belongs, at the politicians and elected leadership who are allowing this to occur.

I have been in frequent contact with the Pallone brothers, (Mayor John Pallone and Senator Frank Pallone), with Vin Gopal, with Andy Kim, with Phil Murphy and Mikie Sherrill, with the Late Mayor of Deal Harry Franco, with Asbury Park Mayor John Moor, former Deal Mayor Morris Ades, former Long Branch Mayor Adam Schneider, and so many more, but none of this has able to generate any relief.

I have been in contact with researchers in Princeton and Rutgers Universities, who conducted health studies, and reported that what they termed this ‘unwanted sound pollution’ is very dangerous. We are creating strokes, heart attacks and dementia that are avoidable, yet all we seem to be able to worry about is some guy who bought a leaf blower for a few hundred bucks, made his money back on it 1,000 times over and we are scared we might ‘hurt his livelihood’.

If someone paid me $300 a day to sit in my car on a residential street and honk my horn non-stop all day, and people tried to stop me, would the answer be? “But the man needs to make a living?” How is that example any different? They are making their living at the expense of everyone else getting sick!

We know that these leaf blowers are in flagrant violation of the allowable noise levels on the books. We need to be asking politicians why our local law enforcement agencies do not have the training and equipment to enforce those laws. Why have none of us ever seen anyone who was operating a leaf blower at illegal noise pollution levels get issued a noise complaint? If I went outside with a sound meter and asked them to stop using the leaf blower to comply with the law, there is a better chance of me getting arrested than them.

When I post on social media about my concern about this issue, I get both types of responses; I get hundreds who support my position and I also get attacked by many who try to belittle me. They also doubt the information that I provide in my posts. Of course, many of those people do not bother to read the provided information, and therefore remain willfully unaware of the serious threats to their well-being that this noise pollution creates.

Below is a link to an important article ( “A Sound Look at an Invisible Menace: Noise” by Dan Aubrey), that you might want to read to help understand the dangers of leaf blowers.

https://www.communitynews.org/princetoninfo/coverstories/a-sound-look-at-an-invisible-menace-noise/article_7b630029-4e94-5b29-bb4d-43a1544d152f.html