Science, Art, Litt, Science based Art & Science Communication
Deepavali fireworks cause more distress than happiness!
Oh, we have been celebrating Deepavali with fun and happiness minus fireworks for the past several years!
Before somebody asks me 'How can there be fun without fireworks?', I want to add I had fun because I didn't contribute to the pollution. I didn't send out a toxic concoction into the atmosphere that rains down heavily into lakes, rivers, seas, fields and houses. I am not responsible for someone developing hypothyroidism, anemia or cancer. And I am extremely happy because of this!
Fireworks get their flamboyance from a variety of chemicals, many of which are toxic to humans. From the gunpowder that fuels their flight to the metallic compounds that color their explosions, fireworks often contain carcinogenic or hormone-disrupting substances that can seep into soil and water, not to mention the lung-clogging smoke they release and plastic debris they scatter.
All most all the major cities in India that have measured Deepavali festival-raised pollution levels recently sounded alarm bells.
Some people justify their acts of using fireworks by saying that these harmful gases released into the atmosphere actually kill mosquitoes and other harmful insects! But these insects might already have developed resistance to these chemicals. Moreover, if they are harmful to some living beings, they would equally be harmful to the other ones too!
First the ever evolving fireworks tempt you and make you buy them at sky-rocketing prices causing distress to your earning loved ones.
Fire accidents are quite common during this festival. The flying fire bits also get into unprotected eyes and burn eye parts, especially the cornea leading to blindness.
Apart from causing agony to the animal life, the loud noises also increase hearing distress and the toxic smoke released into the atmosphere can get lodged in people's lungs and enhance asthmatic symptoms and severe breathing problems in human beings. Anybody considering him/her-self environmentally conscious and responsible will never go anywhere near these fireworks as they pose a serious environmental and health danger from heavy metals and other toxic firework fallout.
Now let us see in detail what the fireworks contain and how they cause inconvenience to living beings.
For the color effect of fireworks, toxic heavy metals like barium, aluminum, lead, mercury salts, antimony, copper, and strontium can be used in firework compositions. Outdated heavy metals that have been used in the past include rubidium and cadmium. Some toxic elements are supposedly not used in fireworks anymore like lead compounds, chlorates, and mercury as mercurous chloride (calomel) but some firework chemical outlets still sell some of these ingredients and they can still be seen in some pyrotechnic chemical lists.
The Toxic Elements of Fireworks
Apart from these, there are also Cadmium compounds which effect lungs, digestive system and some of these are known human carcinogens. Breathing high levels of cadmium can seriously damage the lungs, and consuming it can fluster the stomach, often resulting in vomiting and diarrhea. Long-term exposure can lead to kidney disease, lung damage and fragile bones.
Rubidium used for purple colour displays can cause skin irritation since it's so reactive with moisture, and it's moderately toxic when ingested, reportedly able to replace calcium in bones.
Antimony sulphide used to get various colour displays can also cause lung cancer apart from bronchitis.
Some of the over enthusiasts say, "We enjoy for just one day. What is the big deal?" But the chemicals don't disappear after Diwali night. They still stay in our environment for days effecting all of us! Many of the chemicals in fireworks are persistent in the environment, meaning they stubbornly sit there instead of breaking down.
A recent study of lake water in a town in the US before and after annual fireworks displays found that the perchlorate concentration in the water increased by up to a factor of 1,000 in the hours after the show, exceeding several states' maximum allowable levels for drinking water. The levels took between 20 and 80 days to return to normal. Although much of the perchlorate present in pyrotechnic devices is transformed into harmless compounds during combustion, any remnants of the chemical that fall back to earth can enter into the soil and water. When ingested, perchlorate is absorbed by the thyroid gland in place of iodine, which can interfere with the production of thyroid hormone (and can cause hypothyroidism), an essential part of metabolism and mental development. As a result, perchlorate exposure may be particularly harmful to featuses. Perchlorates have also been shown to cause thyroid cancer in rats and mice, but scientists believe humans are less vulnerable to this effect.
Another study found that barium levels in the air increased 1,000 times after a fireworks-heavy Diwali festival in India and stayed there for at least seven days.
If you really want to spend some good time how about going for laser works, electronic fireworks display lamps and pyrotectics?
And the people who are working in fire work industries can be accommodated elsewhere.
Think about this folks.
And Nature has some exploding plants. Have fun with them....
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Mooseksenpalavapensas, Gas Plant or Burning Bush, Dictamnus albus
The Burning Bush: Could there actually be a plant that burns but is not consumed ? In fact, there is one, a shrub called fraxinella ("the little ash tree"), more popularly known as "the gas plant" or just "the burning bush." It can be found in any well-stocked botanical garden, probably under its Latin name of Dictamnus albus. The several subspecies of fraxinella are sparsely distributed all across the Eurasian landmass, from China and the near east to the Balkans and as far west as the Rhineland. Dictamnus prefers chalky soil and a warm, dry climate. Its sturdy white (hence, albus ) rootstock sends up numerous stiff, vertical stalks bearing tough, dark green leaves that are shaped something like the leaves of an ash tree. The rose-colored blossoms -- which look, appropriately enough, like miniature candles -- appear in early summer. The entire plant is honeycombed with tiny oil sacs that secrete large quantities of volatile oils in hot weather. Direct rays of the sun may ignite the oil, which then burns off so quickly that the plant itself does not catch fire; in other words, it is not consumed.
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Common fireworks release toxic metals into the air : fireworks emit lead, copper, and other toxins, a new study suggests. These metals, which are used to give fireworks their vibrant color, also damage human cells and animal lungs. the study showed harmful levels of lead in two of 12 types of commercially-available fireworks sampled. Experiments using rodents and human also showed that lung exposure to particle emissions from five types of firework significantly increased oxidation, a chemical process in the body that can damage or even kill cells if left unchecked.
https://phys.org/news/2020-07-common-fireworks-toxic-metals-air.htm...
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Fireworks have long-lasting effects on wild birds
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz, Germany, and the Netherlands Institute of Ecology GPS tracked Arctic migratory geese in Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands over the New Year period to examine the long-term impact of fireworks. Their study appears in Conservation Letters.
Movement data from 347 geese showed that on New Year's Eve, birds suddenly leave their sleeping sites and fly to new areas further away from human settlements. The disturbed birds rested two hours less and flew further, sometimes up to 500 kilometers non-stop, than they did on nights without fireworks. The unusual behaviors didn't end with the celebrations. For all studied days after the New Year, geese spent more time foraging and never returned to their original sleeping sites.
Every year, fireworks are set off around the world to welcome the new year. This nighttime spectacle of light, color, and sound is enjoyable for humans, but less so for animals. As anyone with a pet knows, the combination of loud bangs, bright lights, and smoke can provoke fear and disorientation in animals.
In western European countries, the New Year's Eve disturbance is exacerbated by the availability of recreational fireworks, which the public are allowed to purchase and set off for a certain number of hours before and after midnight. These greatly increase the scale of the disturbance, going beyond a few centralized public displays to include explosions scattered far and wide.
During the last decade, studies in Europe have begun to uncover the negative impacts of fireworks on wild birds. A study from 2011 used weather radar to show that thousands of birds in the Netherlands erupted into the air at midnight on New Year's Eve when fireworks began. But research has yet to create a clear picture of if fireworks change important behaviors, such as eating and sleeping, and whether or not birds are able to bounce back after the immediate disturbance.
Using GPS trackers, a team of scientists has quantified, for the first time, the effects of widespread New Year's fireworks on the behavior of individual birds. GPS tracks were collected for 347 individuals in the twelve days before and twelve days after New Year's Eve for eight consecutive years, with each individual tracked for on average two years.
The four species studied were greater white-fronted, barnacle, pink-footed, bean geese. Are all Arctic migratory species, which spend their winters resting and feeding in Northern Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. But the study's findings reveal significant changes to the wintering behavior of all species in response to fireworks.
Normally, geese returned to the same water body for several nights, resting on the surface and moving very little, thus saving essential energy. But during the night of New Year's Eve, when fireworks were being lit, geese left their sleeping sites more often, flew on average 5 to 16 kilometers further and 40 to 150 meters higher than on previous nights.
"It is shocking to see just how much further birds are flying on nights with fireworks compared to other nights. Some individuals flew hundreds of kilometers over a single night, covering distances that they normally would only fly during migration.
In parallel, the team measured particulate matter in the air near sleeping sites, finding that it increased by up to 650 percent on New Year's Eve in all sites studied. Scientists find that birds are leaving their sleeping sites and choosing places further from people and with lower particulate matter, which strongly suggests that they are trying to escape from the fireworks
Beyond the immediate response to fireworks, birds also foraged ten percent more and moved less in the 12 days after New Year's Eve. "The birds are likely compensating for the extra energy they expended during the night of the fireworks
In the final year of the study, the team were offered a unique opportunity to control for the effect of fireworks. The pandemic lockdown of 2020/2021 led to a widespread firework ban and greatly reduced levels of disturbance. Despite this, the effects of increased flight activity, distance, and altitude were still present on New Year's Eve in two of the four goose species.
"This suggests that even small amounts of fireworks will change the behaviors of geese in ways that might reduce their chances of survival, at least in severe winters. "In order to provide a safe space for the birds, recreational fireworks should be banned from areas near national parks, bird sanctuaries, and other important bird resting places."
More information: Andrea Kölzsch et al, Wild goose chase: Geese flee high and far, and with aftereffects from New Year's fireworks, Conservation Letters (2022). DOI: 10.1111/conl.12927
https://phys.org/news/2022-11-fireworks-long-lasting-effects-wild-b...
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Indian capital chokes as 'hazardous' air pollution returns
Recently when a newspaper asked its readers not to burst crackers on Diwali day, many responded by saying that it 's the stubble burning by farmers that causes this pollution and not Diwali crackers! What a way to escape into pseudo-mentality that shifts the blame to others!
If you don't learn, you will have to face the consequences.
Acrid clouds engulfed India's capital on Wednesday as air pollution fueled by both fireworks and farm stubble burning was ranked "hazardous" by monitors for the first time this winter.
New Delhi is home to more than 30 million people and is regularly ranked as one of the most polluted urban areas on the planet.
Commuters walking to work cough through poisonous smog that kills thousands each year, according to health experts, although few in the sprawling city wear masks.
The city's famous India Gate monument was wreathed in foul-smelling mist on Wednesday.
There is a constant bad smell and the pollution level is very high.Levels of fine particulate matter—cancer-causing microparticles known as PM2.5 pollutants that enter the bloodstream through the lungs—surged to nearly 23 times the World Health Organization recommended daily maximum.
The pollutants topped 344 micrograms per cubic meter, according to monitoring firm IQAir on Wednesday, which listed air in the sprawling megacity as "hazardous", ranking it as the world's worst.
https://kkartlab.in/group/some-science/forum/topics/deepavali-firew...
Air pollution is expected to worsen during the Hindu festival of lights, Diwali, which falls on November 1 this year when smoky fireworks spewing hazardous toxins are part of celebrations. The smoke from the firecrackers will blanket the whole city in smog, say teh experts.
New Delhi this month ordered a "complete ban" on all firecrackers—both their manufacture and sale—in view of the "public interest to curb high air pollution".
However, previous restrictions were routinely ignored.
Police are often reluctant to act against violators, given the strong religious sentiments attached to the crackers by the devotees.
The New Delhi government in past years has sought to cut pollution by restricting vehicle traffic, including a scheme that only allowed cars with odd or even number license plates to travel on alternate days.
Authorities have also imposed seasonal bans on construction work and on diesel-powered vehicles from entering the city.
The same situation exists all over India, not only Delhi.
But the government's efforts have so far failed to solve the country's air quality problem.
A study in The Lancet medical journal attributed 1.67 million premature deaths in 2019 to air pollution in the world's most populous country.
Source: News agencies
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