Dirt Blowers are Safe: A Dangerous Lesson
by Mark Rock
Welcome to the Santa Barbara Unified School District, where children learn to not merely disregard but to court risks to their health.
On May 25, 2021, the Coalition for a Safe Santa Barbara (CSSB) – an organization with the published aim of “bringing together community resources, law enforcement, and city government in a common mission of realizing a healthier and safer City” – was alarmed to discover that gasoline-powered dirt blowers were being used in an area immediately adjacent to Santa Barbara High School (SBHS).
When it comes to damaging health, dirt blowers are exceptionally insidious: Blowers blast everything on the ground into the air at speeds exceeding 200 mph, creating a toxic cloud of microparticles made up of pesticides, herbicides, asbestos from brake dust, tire residue, ground glass, fungi, molds, bacterial spores, insect parts, animal waste, and heavy metals such as lead and cadmium. These remain suspended in the air within a radius of up to a quarter mile for several hours. Even those inside the school are at significant risk, as the aerosolized particles easily breach cracks in walls and doorways.
As it had in the past, CSSB began documenting the violation, this time via video from the public area above the Anapamu basketball courts. Students inquired about the filming and were informed of what was being documented. They were told about the dangers of dirt blowers. A teacher overheard the conversation and communicated to the students in no uncertain manner that dirt blowers were, in fact, not a health hazard. The teacher underscored this point through telling the videographer to “get a life” and directing offensive language his way.
When it was reiterated that dirt blowers were dangerous, the teacher responded, “Oh, wah, wah, wah.” As it turns out, the instructor taught both PE and health education: Santa Barbara Unified School District (SBUSD) may leave us wanting in many regards, but one capacity in which they never come up short is the irony they supply on a near-constant basis.
Lack of Accountability Leads to Greater Responsibility at SBUSD
CSSB immediately contacted SBHS and indicated that there may be a need to mitigate a “clear lack of understanding/appreciation with respect to the dangers posed by dirt blowers,” and offered to be a resource “in ensuring that our children and our community can move forward with a mutual aim of providing for their health and well-being … ”
An assistant principal was assigned to investigate the matter.
His response?
“I highly recommend to you in the future to not video or film record in the direction of any public school that has children present. Recording of children without the direct permission of school authorities and their parents is not allowable and an offense taken very seriously for matters of safety and security.”
An organization with a demonstrated commitment to the safety of the community had just informed him that one of his teachers was putting children at risk, and his response was to turn the tables? The abdication of responsibility revealed here, and the ineptitude underlying it, is not at all surprising when one considers the track record of SBUSD. The District routinely exhibits poor judgment, and, once again drawing on its inexhaustible stock of irony, this happens to be particularly true when it comes to “matters of safety and security.” The vice principal made it unmistakably clear that he saw no need for remediation or further action.
The situational assessments of not just the person supervising the blacktop, but the school administrator, lay bare the substantial perils our children face when we entrust them to SBUSD.
Gasoline-powered dirt blowers pose a risk to health without peer.
The toxic material-spewing machines have been conclusively linked to the development of COPD, asthma, cancer, heart failure, and hearing loss; operating a blower next to occupied school grounds is clearly unconscionable. It is also illegal: Use of the devices in Santa Barbara have been banned since 1997 (S.B. Municipal Code 9.16.020-021).
Don’t Hold Your Breath
Yet, despite these well-documented, scientifically, and legally sound facts, the only action SBUSD representatives could take on learning of their operation immediately adjacent to one of their campuses was to attack the messenger. Worse, this incident came on the heels of an investigation conducted by CSSB one week prior, which yielded the finding that the blowers were being used on the school grounds by District employees (CSSB was able to successfully put a stop to that practice following no small measure of persistence).
Three years after this incident, the assistant principal was named Principal of Santa Barbara High School in a unanimous vote by Santa Barbara Unified.
It’s nothing if not emblematic of the larger mosaic of this District that it would take a man seemingly dismissive of risks to children and promote him to an even higher position where he enjoys less oversight. Nevertheless, CSSB and the rest of us may have cause for cautious optimism: The principal who presided over a lesson in which students learned to be indifferent to serious risks to their health retires at the end of this year. Will his SBUSD-chosen successor give parents and students cause to breathe, both literally and figuratively, with a little more assurance?
I, for one, am not holding my breath.
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The author is one of the founders and the past president of CSSB.
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Take a look at COLAB’s latest video, “The Great Fee Heist”
Yawn, let me get this straight, gasoline blowers are a health risk and battery powered blowers do not pose the same risk by virtue of spreading similar particulate matter? Further, our schools are failing miserably with reading, writing, arithmetic and you chose to focus on leaf blowers? Talk about a solution looking for a problem.
Sounds like more of the same nanny state, “Chicken Little, the sky is falling,” mentality. Seriously, if it was an issue like getting lead out of schools, repairing corrosive plumbing or even getting males out of girls sports, you’d get some cred. I guess wind farms will now be banned for spreading dust?
Between inhaled toxins, injected toxins and ideological toxins, the SB public school system could reasonably be declared a toxic waste site.