The Bombs Bursting In Air

PRESENTED BY SAFETEA-LU

​At 3 PM today, join DeSmog – along with special guests Naomi Klein, Michael E. Mann and Jim Hoggan – as we look back on two decades of climate accountability wins and reflect on what we need to do to ensure that the next 20 years usher in the end of climate denial and obstruction.

Trump’s semiquincentennial griftiversary on the Mall concluded with “about 851,000 fireworks” on July 5th, delayed by thunderstorms and incompetence.

As expected, a toxic plume from this bloated fireworks barrage poisoned the air around the nation’s capital. For more than twelve hours, the toxic core of the plume hung over Washington, D.C.’s Ward 8 and Prince George’s County in Maryland, the part of the region with the highest Black population. AQI readings soared to 278 and 288 in the city at 6 am, with highly hazardous pollution covering Wards 2, 6, 7, and 8, reaching into Arlington, and PG County down to Rosaryville up to Woodlawn.

The particulate pollution from fireworks includes toxic organic compounds and should be considered dangerous even by the standards of a pollution event with these readings. Luckily highs were “only” into the low 90s, after several days of 100°F+ weather.

The localized fireworks pollution combined with the unhealthy haze of wildfire smoke that covers the entire nation. Cooking the planet until everything burns turns out to have consequences.

Fireworks shows have a Clean Air Act carve out that was added by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) in 2005 to SAFETEA-LU, bipartisan legislation that passed overwhelmingly in both the House and Senate.

There are federal networks (CSN, NATTS, IMPROVE) which collect air samples and text them for toxicity. There are two air toxics monitoring stations that were within the fireworks plume—one in MacMillan Reservoir in D.C., and one in Beltsville, Md., about 15 miles northeast of D.C., which peaked at 160 AQI at 7 am, so it will have results on the air toxics as well. Results will eventually be reported to the EPA’s Air Quality System. Because the samples require lab analysis (and the Trump regime has gutted federal scientific capacity) it will take weeks to months for the results to be reported.

Environmental monitors should be taking water and soil samples from the Anacostia and Oxun Run and other sites directly downwind of the toxic event.

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