Importance of Air pollution forensics at an annual massive firework display episode

  Massive fireworks display are crowd-pleasing events to mark special occasions such as religious festivals, national celebrations, victories of various events, etc. all over the world.  In spite of their short duration, these events release large quantities of pollutants including toxic chemicals and heavy metals into the atmosphere. The recurrence of such events annually at the same location not only affect the air quality adversely, but can also pose severe soil and groundwater contamination problems as a result of dry and wet deposition of pollutants and its subsequent migration to the subsurface environment. These are generally considered as long-term impacts as the deposited metals accumulate annually and persist for decades. In order to establish the contribution of fireworks display emissions to soil and ground water contamination in an area, it is important to carry out a Forensic analysis of the air quality during such large-scale fireworks display. Analysis of air quality during fireworks display will help to determine the contribution of firework emissions to the air pollution at a place, where other sources of pollution such as traffic, industrial and commercial activities, etc. may also exist. Moreover, the analysis of the air quality during such large-scale fireworks display also have legal importance as they provide more convincing and sound evidences of violations, if any during such events. In this study, the Particulate Matter (PM) samples from ambient air were collected from a temple ground in Kerala, India, where festival related massive fireworks display is conducted annually. The PM samples were collected during events for three years 2019,2022 and 2023 and also during two other years when no fireworks display was conducted due to COVID19 induced restrictions. The chemical analysis of the samples was carried out to determine the presence of signature pollutants which were released during the fireworks display. The analysis results clearly indicate the presence of signature pollutants in the samples collected during the fireworks display, whereas these pollutants were absent in the samples collected from the same place during no fireworks display years. The signature pollutants identified for the case were As, B, Ba, Cd, Cr, Cu, Li, Mg, Mn, Pb, Sr, V and Zn which are ingredients in fireworks, added for imparting specific properties such as colour, sound, etc. The study shows that, through Forensic analysis, the contribution of pollutants from festival fireworks display to the ambient air can be confirmed, which can further be used to establish their long-term impact on environment.