Health and Environmental Advocates Push for Non-Use of Firecrackers and Fireworks to Cut Toxic Air Pollution
QUEZON CITY – (December 29, 2023) Advocates for health and environmental protection are urging Filipino families to usher in the New Year with cleaner air by not lighting firecrackers and fireworks.
Dr. Maricar Limpin, a pulmonologist at the Philippine Heart Center, and Aileen Lucero, an environmentalist from the EcoWaste Coalition, pushed for a non-hazardous and non-polluting welcome to 2024 to minimize injuries and the releases of harmful chemicals into the atmosphere.
“Lighting firecrackers and fireworks — legal or illegal ones — generates environmental pollutants that can aggravate the air quality, which can have life-threatening effects on the most vulnerable groups, especially the children, senior citizens, and people with cardiovascular, neurological, respiratory and other medical conditions. Breathing in these microscopic pollutants may result in coughing, wheezing, and shortness of breath, as well as asthma and heart attacks,” said Limpin who is also the past president of the Philippine College of Physicians and the Philippine College of Chest Physicians.
Among the environmental pollutants generated by the exploding firecrackers and fireworks are suspended particulate matter (SPM), greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxide, and chemicals associated with the manufacture of firecrackers and fireworks like aluminum, barium, copper, lead, potassium, and strontium.
Inhaling PM 2.5, Limpin said, can be very harmful as these fine particles can travel deep into the respiratory tract and the lungs. For instance, a study by the Manila Observatory showed PM 2.5 reached “very unhealthy” levels as a result of firework activities during the 2019 New Year revelry. The hourly and average PM2.5 of 143.4 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m3) between 6:00 pm on December 31, 2018, and 8:00 am on January 1, 2019, exceeded the 24-hour National Ambient Air Quality Guideline Value (NAAQGV) of 50.0 μg/m3.
According to the US EPA’s Air Quality Index (AQI) levels of health concern, when the air quality has reached the “very unhealthy” level, sensitive groups are advised to “avoid all physical activities outdoors and reschedule to a time when air quality is better or move activities indoors.” All others are advised to “avoid long or intense activities and consider rescheduling or moving activities indoors.”
For her part, Lucero emphasized that the right of every Filipino to clean air is violated outright by the lighting of firecrackers and fireworks, which according to some will blast away bad luck and usher in good fortune.
“We need to uphold our basic right to clean air as we bid adieu to 2023 and embrace 2024. We appeal to our fellow citizens to join hands in upholding our right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment by choosing not to spend on injurious and poisonous firecrackers and fireworks,” she said.
Money intended for the purchase of firecrackers and fireworks is better spent for a healthy “media noche” in the company of our joyful and hopeful family members and friends, the EcoWaste Coalition said. ### (PR)
Reference:
https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/21/6155/2021/acp-21-6155-2021.pdf
https://document.airnow.gov/air-quality-guide-for-particle-pollution.pdf
