Widely seen as an expression of celebration and happiness, fireworks may slowly be damaging the environment drastically. In Pakistan, normally, fireworks are used on several occasions usually to celebrate.
For some strange reason, people all around the world have decided to mark an event is to have public fireworks show mainly because it is aesthetically pleasing to watch.
However, what most people fail to realize is that such fireworks are a serious environmental hazard. When a firework is launched, it throws a combination of chemicals in the air which harms both the people and the atmosphere. They create a ring of highly toxic gases and pollutants that poison the air, water, soil, and makes these things toxic for animals, and people as well.
To make things clearer, the aesthetically pleasing colors that emerge from fireworks are the result of chemistry and physics together. Specifically, fireworks’ colors depend upon solid metal salts and chemical explosives (this is the chemistry part) that create colors when heated to the correct temperatures (this is the physics part). Different metal compounds give different colors. For example, lithium (Li) salts produce pink, sodium (Na) salts make yellow or orange, copper (Cu) and barium (Ba) salts generate green or blue, and calcium (Ca) or strontium (Sr) give red.
While these metals in the fireworks may go through physical change, many of them experience a chemical change as well when they are combined with oxygen in the air. This chemical reaction releases smoke and gases such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen, and these are some of the primary greenhouse gases responsible for climate change.
So, during the explosion of these fireworks, these metal salts do not ‘burn up’. They are still metal atoms, and many of them end up as aerosols that poison the air, the water, and the soil. When inhaled or ingested, these metals can cause a huge variety of short- and long-term reactions, ranging from vomiting, diarrhea, or asthma attacks, to kidney disease, cardiotoxic effects, and a variety of cancers.
Pakistan is already facing terrible amounts of air pollution with the deadly smog levels in the winters which have already taken several lives over the country. It is imperative that we stand against the use of fireworks and educate the public regarding this matter.
The government needs to identify the severity of such actions and build relevant campaigns to spread awareness regarding the problems caused by fireworks and why they need to be controlled.
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