The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) urged the public to avoid lighting firecrackers or burning paper offerings to mark Ghost Festival because of the environmental and health hazards they pose.
The event, also known as Chungyuan Festival (中元節), falls on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, which this year is Aug. 28.
Citing agency data for comparison, the EPA said that the air quality in Tainan’s Yanshui District (鹽水) before and after the 2007 Yanshui Beehive Fireworks Festival — held after the Lunar New Year — recorded a 10-fold increase in air pollutants.
Airborne pollutants’ particulate matter (PM) readings reached 400 micrograms per cubic meter (mcg/m3) for PM10 and 250mcg/m3 for PM2.5 after the fireworks festival that year, the agency said.
At their height, PM10 and PM2.5 pollutants reached 1,046mcg/m3 and 842mcg/m3 respectively during the event, it said, adding that the PM2.5 reading was 23 times the average of 35mcg/m3.
The concentration of heavy metals, such as strontium, potassium, barium and lead — elements that give fireworks their vibrant colors — could increase to more than 10 times or even 100 times their normal values within hours after a large amount of fireworks is set off, Environmental Monitoring and Information Management Director-General Tsai Hung-teh (蔡鴻德) said.
The EPA also recorded PM2.5 levels of 200 to 300mcg/m3 during the few hours of fireworks display at the New Year’s Eve celebration in Penghu County this year, as well as religious events in Pingtung and Nantou counties in March, he said.
Although the actual health risks that fireworks pose to spectators need further analysis, reducing pollution emissions is a shared responsibility, Tsai said.
He urged Ghost Festival organizers to cut down on firecrackers and replace them with eco-friendly “green fireworks” that produce the same sound effect as conventional fireworks, but have a lower environmental impact.
The EPA urged the public to give the money for buying offerings to be burned to charity instead or replace paper money with other offerings like food.
Burning incense contributes to air pollution in areas near temples, the EPA said, urging other temples to emulate Taipei’s Xingtian Temple (行天宮), which banned incense burning in August last year.
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