Are Trendy Eco-friendly Fireworks Worth the Hype?
Every year, after holidays known for their fireworks displays, you might notice that your city’s air quality plummets. Fireworks are beautiful and fun; almost everyone enjoys the booms, sizzles, cracks and pops, not to mention the blossoms, fountains and trails of bright, colorful light. Unfortunately, when fireworks explode, they expel a large amount of pollutants into the air, and those pollutants can linger, affecting your health and impacting the environment, for hours or days, depending on the weather.
Recently, consumers everywhere have begun to demand sustainability and eco-friendliness from all manner of products. As a result, fireworks manufacturers have begun marketing environmentally friendly fireworks — but are these fireworks any better for the air, or are they merely green-washed to trick consumers into spending more money?
How Normal Fireworks Affect the Environment
Most fireworks are composed of various chemical cocktails each with its own purpose, such as to propel the firework into the sky, to explode into certain shapes, to produce dazzling colors and more. Unfortunately, few of these chemicals are entirely destroyed during the firework explosion; instead, they are released into the air during the explosion, and from there, they usually travel into the surrounding soil and water.
Many of the chemicals used in fireworks and expelled into the environment can have negative consequences on the health of humans and other animals. For example, perchlorates are often used as oxidizers in fireworks to fuel explosions; easily dissolved in drinking water, perchlorates can affect the natural function of the thyroid gland, affecting metabolic processes and inhibiting brain development. Some of the most popular chemicals for creating color in fireworks are similarly toxic. Strontium can hinder healthy bone growth; aluminum can produce respiratory and neurological problems; and barium can cause all sorts of disastrous effects, from nausea and irregular heartbeat to paralysis and death.
Fortunately, the quantities of these chemicals in fireworks tends to be low, nearly negligible; it is only when fireworks are used in excessive quantities in a single area that the surrounding environment might become compromised. Rather, the more pressing issue regarding the environmental impact of traditional fireworks is air contamination. As mentioned above, fireworks displays often radically reduce air quality because of the extreme amounts of particulate matter they expel. This lower-quality air can impact the climate and result in respiratory distress for all living things in the area.
How Environmentally Friendly Fireworks Are Different
Eco-friendly fireworks are different from traditional fireworks in several ways. First, instead of using perchlorates as an oxidizer during explosions, most environmentally friendly fireworks rely on a nitrogen-based fuel, which burns cleanly and produces minimal amounts of smoke. As a result, manufacturers can use less of the chemicals for creating vibrant colors, which means less of those chemicals end up in the surrounding environment.
Most notably, environmentally friendly fireworks produce a considerably smaller plume of particulate matter than traditional fireworks, and that plume is dispersed by wind and other natural forces with much greater speed. Though the true impact on air quality that eco-friendly fireworks may have has not been formally evaluated, the smaller amount of particulate matter is a good sign that they will be less harmful to the natural environment than traditional fireworks.
How You Should Buy Fireworks in the Future
If you want access to environmentally friendly fireworks, you should consider purchasing fireworks online rather at your local fireworks vendor. Online fireworks retailers are more likely to stock a greater variety of eco-friendly options, which means you can add more diversity to your fireworks displays while remaining committed to reducing your environmental impact.
Of course, consumer fireworks are only a small fraction of the environmental impact of fireworks. Commercial fireworks displays are larger and higher in the atmosphere, which means they have much more potential to cause harm. You might write to your local representatives to ask for more regulations on consumer and commercial fireworks to ensure that eco-friendly fireworks are used whenever possible.
Eco-friendly fireworks are not a perfect solution to the problem of fireworks’ environmental impact, but they are a start. If you want to feel better about celebrating with fireworks, you should consider using eco-friendly options during your next big bash.
