Setting off fireworks is woven into the fabric of U.S. history, with the first such spectacle occurring at Philadelphia’s inaugural Independence Day festivities in 1777.
But amid growing concerns about air quality, supply chains and wildfires, certain cities — including several in the U.S. West — have opted to part with tradition for the foreseeable future, The New York Times reported.
Salt Lake City, Utah, and Boulder, Colo., were among those to swap fireworks for LED aerial displays this year.
Lake Tahoe, Calif., held its second annual drone show on Tuesday. The San Diego communities of Ocean Beach and La Jolla also opted for an LED spectacle over fireworks, as did North Richland Hills in Texas.
“Less risk of fire, less risk of damage, less risk of injury,” Rick Boss, president of Sky Elements Drone Shows, which ran the North Richland Hills event, told CBS News.
While most of this shift has thus far taken place in the wildfire-prone U.S. West, a drone-lit Statue of Liberty took over New York City skies just prior to the annual firework display, local station Fox 5 reported.
Fireworks lead to a surge of two types of particulate pollution: larger particles known as PM 10 and fine particles called PM 2.5 — with diameters of 10 microns or less and 2.5 microns or less, respectively.
Exposure to PM 2.5, which is about one-thirtieth of the width of a human hair, can infiltrate both the human bloodstream and the lungs, while PM 10 can trigger asthma attacks and cause other respiratory issues.
But particulates are far from the only pollutants associated with fireworks, Utah’s Department of Environmental Quality warned.
Other contaminants include sulfur and potassium in the gunpowder that fuels them, as well as the heavy metals that enable “the explosions of color,” the agency stated.
Salt Lake City held its event Saturday, ahead of Independence Day, part of “a proactive effort to combat the city’s high fire danger and to alleviate local air quality concerns,” a municipal press release stated.
“As temperatures rise and fire danger increases, we must be conscientious of both our air quality and the potential for wildfires,” Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall (D) said in a statement.
In Boulder, a bout of severe thunderstorms on Tuesday evening delayed the northern Colorado city’s inaugural spectacle, which was cut short but then resumed when weather risks tapered.
Despite the inclement weather, photos published by The Daily Camera show a multicolored “1776” illuminating the foggy sky over the University of Colorado’s Folsom Field.
The switch from fireworks to drones occurred due to “a number of factors, including increased fire danger fueled by climate change,” a city press release announced ahead of the event.
Meanwhile, Minneapolis opted for a laser display, since the technology has become easier to procure than fireworks in recent years.
While fireworks have long been a quintessential part of Fourth of July festivities, their use is by no means limited to the U.S — nor are attempts to cut air pollution by banning them.
Such steps can be surprisingly effective. Scientists in China, for example, previously found Zhengzhou City’s firework prohibition policy led to “an obvious ‘peak-shaving’ effect during the traditional heavy pollution period” that coincides with the Spring Festival holiday. The biggest effects were reductions in particulate matter pollution.
Researchers in India, meanwhile, determined that firework-related emissions were “a significant contributor” to air pollution in Delhi during the four-day Diwali period celebrated each fall, and a 2010-21 study conducted in Augsburg, Germany, revealed a “drastic increase” in particulate matter concentrations on New Year’s Day, when firework displays are common across the country.
Still, some acknowledge that ditching the displays may be hard in much of the U.S.
A Utah Department of Environmental Quality article noted that “for many people, the Fourth of July wouldn’t BE the Fourth of July without fireworks.”
“But these pyrotechnic displays also produce high concentrations of smoke and particulates,” the agency stressed, warning such pollution not only harms air quality, but also poses a threat to human health.
