Do fireworks contaminate the environment?
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Skyrocketing pollution: assessing the environmental fate of July 4th fireworks in New York City
Antonio F. Saporito, Terry Gordon, Beck Kim, Tri Huynh, Rahanna Khan, Amna Raja, Kristin Terez, Nicole Camacho-Rivera, Rachel Gordon, Julie Gardella, Maria Katsigeorgis, Rodney Graham, Thomas Kluz, Max Costa & David Luglio
• In 2022 an estimated 2.7 billion dollars was spent on fireworks in the United States alone.
• This paper looked at the 2023 Macys Fourth of July Fireworks show.
• The largest of its kind in the United States, fireworks are generated from 60,000 shells across five barges on the east river over a 25 minute period.
• Air sampling was done at 4 residential sites and water sampling was done in the east river with control samples taken in September for comparison.
• Researchers focused on how much:
o black carbon (BC)
o particulate matter and
o metals could be detected in air and water samples.
Both airborne particulate matter and black carbon showed an increase in concentration post fireworks show in real time sampling. With the highest location for particulate matter was NW Manhattan and for black carbon it was NW and SW Manhattan. The unit of measurement for particulate matter was ug/m3 and for black carbon ng/m3.
“This unit measures the concentration of a pollutant in the air. Kind of like measure sugar in coffee. It tells you how many micrograms of the pollutant is in one cubic meter of air.
The WHO sets a 24-hour PM2.5 safety threshold at 35 µg/m³. It’s the scientific baseline for analysis, capturing precise risks tied to specific pollutants.”
The New York city Particulate Matter concentrations were compared to EPA monitoring sites in five other major cities in the United states that had large July 4th firework shows. Seattle and New York appear to have the highest, note the scale of the graphs! New York detected more particulate matter than Seattle. Next is DC, San Francisco, then Boston and Philadelphia.
The majority of tested airborne concentrations of trace elements in new York showed an increase after the fireworks show in comparison to control sampling in September. The only exceptions were chromium and manganese which were below detection levels at both sampling times.
The Highest detected elements were potassium and sulfur and the lowest were Zinc, titanium, bismuth.
All tested Trace elements in water samples were detected with the top three elements being Calcium Potassium and Iron. The lowest detected were Nickel, lead, chromium, antimony.
It’s clear there was an increase in the targets, airborne black carbon, particulate matter, and heavy metals post 4th of July fireworks show.
- Is there anything we can do to decrease this contamination post show
- Disney World in Orlando, Florida experienced elevated perchlorate concentrations and metal contamination due to their fire work shows. To reduce the effects the shows had on the fragile Florida Everglades environment, they worked with the Los Alamos National Laboratory to substitute compressed air for the explosive chemicals used to propel fireworks into the atmosphere.
- There is also an effort to use “greener” chemistry when creating fireworks and some substitute fireworks with colorful drones.
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