deepavalivakula

Celebrate Deepavali with less or no fireworks!

By Vakula Surendar October 9, 2017

I wish you all a very happy Deepavali. Let us celebrate Deepavali for what it originally was and not for what it has come to be.

When we think of Deepavali, we think of fireworks: lively, colorful fireworks bursting in the night sky. However, Deepavali is actually a festival of lights, not one of colour and noise. Even the name "Deepavali" means "row of lights”. But today, one can hardly imagine a Deepavali without the fireworks in the sky.

As most of us know, fireworks cause a lot of air pollution. The day after Deepavali, the skyline is all fogged up because of the smoke from the fireworks. But we are flooded with news about air pollution everyday. Who can forget the lovely maths lesson the honourable delhi government conducted on odd and even numbers last year to handle pollution!

So what makes the pollution from fireworks so different from everything else? Why does it need special attention? As it turns out, the devil lies in the details.

First, let us look at the structure of one of those fancy aerial fireworks. We need 2 things - something to launch it into the sky, and something to make it explode in a shower of sparks.

The colours are all contained within the aerial shell. The firework is launched into the air by gunpowder underneath the aerial shell. Once it is in the air, gunpowder inside the aerial shell ignites and causes the stars, which are explosive materials made of metallic compounds, to catch fire. These compounds explode in different colours. Gunpowder itself is made up of three things: charcoal, sulfur fuel, and perchlorates.

Perchlorates could well be the reason for all those thyroid issues we have been hearing about lately. Why? Perchlorates inhibit our thyroid gland's ability to take up iodine. This disrupts the production of certain hormones which our essential for normal growth.

After some hours, perchlorates begin to dissipate. But the metallic compounds used to make colour, hang around for years and can have drastic effects on the environment and human health. For example, copper is used to make fireworks burn blue. A harmless chemical by itself, it releases vicious chemicals called dioxins when it burns along with perchlorates. These dioxins cause a serious skin disease called chloracne, cancer, and disrupts glucose metabolism and hormone production.

Just this one chemical causes this much damage. Imagine what effect the host of other chemicals burning in the air will have! Besides copper, there is strontium, lithium, barium, cadmium, and rubidium, all of which are as toxic as copper! It's as if an entire chemistry lab is bursting every time we launch a firework!

If a rocket that bursts so far away from us can cause this much damage to our health, imagine what will happen to children who slave day and night surrounded by these chemicals! The problem of child labour is very real indeed. Though we might wish that the government rules were safely in place, that is mere wishful thinking. For every single licensed factory, there are at least five unlicensed ones!

Indeed, this war is not one that belongs to the government; it belongs to all of uṣ. And it is our responsibility to win it! Let us celebrate a crackerless Deepavali and leave everyone happy!