Giant fireworks to mark July 4 in the United States, but the country's air quality will suffer

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Fireworks are a big part of July 4th celebrations, but the smoke they generate can lead to poor air quality in the days that follow (Credit: Getty Images)

Millions of tons of fireworks are set off each year to celebrate Independence Day in the United States, causing an increase in air pollution. Should we be concerned?

Fireworks have been around for thousands of years. Many historians believe the first firecrackers appeared in China in the 2nd century B.C. But today we are beginning to understand the extent of their impact on wildlife, the environment, and human health.

Bad for our health?

Although most attention to the dangers of fireworks focuses on injuries from burns and explosions, these festive displays have other far-reaching effects, especially when used in large events such as Fourth of July and New Year's Eve celebrations.

But Peter Brimblecombe, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom who lives in Waikiki, Hawaii, published a paper in 2023 analyzing how fireworks can also contribute to particulate pollution in the air.

In some areas, the concentration of fine PM2.5 particles can be between 1.5 and 10 times higher than normal on the night of July 4 and the following day, according to a study of California air quality in 2019 and 2020. These fine sooty particles have been linked to a range of health problems, including asthma, heart disease and low birth weight.

Another 2015 study of 315 sites in the United States found that PM2.5 concentrations were 42% higher nationwide on average during the July 4 holiday. In the hardest-hit areas, those closest to the big fireworks displays, PM2.5 concentrations nearly quadrupled. But the pollution is usually short-lived, tending to decrease around noon the next day.

“Certainly, pollution loads increase during events,” Brimblecombe says. “Poor air quality and associated health risks were part of the New Year’s Eve festivities on Oahu.” [in Hawaii] for many years. And it is a problem that continues to attract attention.

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The majority of fireworks displays in the United States occur around the Fourth of July and New Year's holidays (Credit: Getty Images)

In his own study, Brimblecombe found a “sharp increase” in PM2.5 concentrations during fireworks celebrations.

Fireworks also release large amounts of other air pollutants, including sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide, as well as particulate matter. Heavy metals, which give fireworks their bright colors, are also often toxic, and tests on mice have shown that particulate pollution containing these metals can be harmful. A recent study of air pollution in northern Utah by researchers at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, found that concentrations of metals such as copper, potassium, barium, chromium, vanadium, and strontium increased during the Independence Day holiday due to smoke from fireworks.

“The link with health is harder to establish, but I think it is workers rather than the general public who are suffering,” he says. “However, there is evidence in Iceland that asthma attacks have increased, but the statistics are poor because few people live in Iceland.

“People exposed to respiratory radiation can be affected by short episodes of high concentration,” he adds. “And staying upwind of exposures could limit [this] exposure.”

An analysis of wildfires on federal lands in the United States over a 37-year period found that 11,294 fires could be attributed to fireworks.

Some scientists estimate that several hundred million people worldwide are exposed to fireworks smoke each year, although it is difficult to say how precise this figure is.

The report adds that children are particularly sensitive to the harmful effects of exposure to ambient air.

Impact on the planet

Fireworks can also trigger wildfires that cause much more long-lasting and widespread air pollution. An analysis of wildfires on federal lands in the United States over a 37-year period starting in 1980 found that 11,294 of the nearly 600,000 fires during that time period could be attributed to fireworks. Two-thirds of them occurred during the two-week period around July 4.

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Heavy metals are often used to produce the bright colours of fireworks as they burn as they fall back to Earth (Credit: Getty Images)

But fireworks also generate other waste that lasts much longer once the dazzling explosions fade and the smoke clears.

A study by the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Park Service found that water samples taken around Mount Rushmore between 2011 and 2015 had elevated levels of perchlorate, a propellant used in fireworks, in areas where fireworks were held on Independence Day between 1998 and 2009. It also found elevated levels of the chemical in soil where fireworks were set off and where rocket debris landed. Another study in 2007 at a lake in Ada, Oklahoma, found that perchlorate levels increased after the Fourth of July fireworks to 1,028 times the levels seen on the days before. It then took 20 to 80 days for the contamination to return to baseline levels.

There are concerns that this contamination could end up in drinking water, where high levels of perchlorate can disrupt human thyroid function. The Environmental Protection Agency is currently funding a study to assess how much perchlorate from fireworks is ending up in U.S. lakes, rivers and streams.

But there are other problems related to the physical debris left behind by fireworks.

“Research into plastic pollution from fireworks is gaining momentum,” says Elizabeth Westhead, a bioscientist at the University of East London in the United Kingdom. Westhead co-authored a study that looked at microplastic levels in London’s River Thames over the New Year period.[There’s] “There is growing evidence of its environmental impact,” she says.

Westhead and his colleagues studied a stretch of the Thames near Westminster where the annual New Year's Eve fireworks display takes place and found that microplastics were “significantly higher” in the area after the 2020 fireworks spectacular. The study found that microplastics increased by more than 1,000% over a 24-hour period.

“This short-term influx of microplastics from fireworks will have a negative impact on the ecology of the river and surrounding waterways,” says Ria Devereux, lead author of the study and a sustainability researcher at the University of East London. “I was curious, especially since I hadn’t found any literature on microplastics from fireworks. I expected to find some, but not in the quantities I found.”

“I think we were all in shock to see so many microplastics entering the aquatic system as a result of a 15-minute fireworks display.”

The study is important, Devereux says, because microplastics and polymer chemicals can be absorbed by aquatic and marine animals, entering the food chain.

But it may take time to raise awareness about plastic pollution from fireworks, Westhead acknowledges. “It’s going to take more time and a lot more work to sway public opinion on a very popular tradition,” she says.

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Light shows using drones and beams of colored light are starting to emerge as alternatives to fireworks (Credit: Getty Images)

Wildlife in distress

The annual timing of some large-scale fireworks displays, such as those on July 4 and New Year's Eve, coincides with wildlife breeding and migratory behavior and may therefore have long-term effects on animal populations, a study has found.

A more sustainable option

Laser shows and drones are just some of the alternatives being used: they are reusable, produce no emissions and are quiet. Drones are not without their drawbacks, although they also disturb wildlife.

As researchers in a study on the impacts of fireworks on urban air quality summarize: “It is up to the local communities concerned to decide in a balanced way whether this form of entertainment is worth the risky atmospheric cocktail it generates.”

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