Fireworks. Credit: Courier-Journal files.
There’s a Debbie Downer in every crowd and I know I get to play that role from time to time. S0 … Happy Fourth of July, and … get ready for some of the most polluted air of the year in Louisville.
All that Fourth of July fireworks fun often ends up driving soot levels into the stratosphere around here. (Of course, it’s not like it use to be around here, when Louisville air pollution was like Beijing.)
But as I showed last July 6, and following several other previous Independence Days, readings late on July 4 and into early morning July 6, spiked into the 90 micrograms per cubic meter range. It wasn’t enough to cause a violation of the 24-hour average limit, which is 35 micrograms per cubic meter. Still, those are high numbers for Louisville now.
And as I wrote in 2008, citing research by Thomas Klapötke at the University of Munich, Germany, fireworks put a blend of toxic materials into the air:
Pyrotechnical materials contain an oxidizer and a reducing agent; depending on the application, binding material, propellant charges, coloring agents and smoke- and sound-producing agents can be added. When a firework or other pyrotechnic is set off, it releases a whole cocktail of poisons damaging to humans and the environment: heavy metals like lead, barium and chromium, chlorates, dioxins, smoke and particulates, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen and sulfur oxides.
Officials have told me it’s the widespread use of fireworks by residents and municipalities alike that does it.
The numbers spiked in 2011, too, and local air district officials have reported elevated levels of fine particles on Independence Days in 2004 through 2007 and 2010.