Guy Fawkes Night can be loads of fun, but do fireworks and bonfires burn up the environment?

Published on Friday 31 October 2008 13:28

OOOOH! Bang! Whizzzzz! Aaah! Bang! Yelp! Can you tell what it is yet? It's the annual Bonfire Night bash, complete with dazzling fireworks and terrified pets scurrying for cover. Or did the yelp come from a hedgehog trapped in the bonfire? Do hedgehogs yelp?

You might have thought that November 5 was a good excuse to wrap up warm, wave some sparklers around and enjoy yourself, but oh how wrong you'd be. From animal-rights concerns to air-pollution issues, not even Guy Fawkes Night escapes the eagle eye of eco-evangelists.

I love fireworks – Catherine wheels, fountains, rockets, bangers, the lot. Except sparklers. I've never touched one and never will, thanks to that old TV advert where a little bare hand reaches for the hot end of the sparkler. It wasn't quite as harrowing as the ad with the boy who climbs into an electricity substation to retrieve his Frisbee, but it got the message across.

Despite this morbid fear of sparklers, I found myself eyeing up some firework kits in a magazine. The Grand Finale pack promised three minutes of eye-popping colour for 64.99. "Ooooh," I thought. "We could have a bonfire in the back garden, and let off a few fireworks and do baked potatoes – that would be lovely."

This was despite last year's local fireworks extravaganza, where men, women, children and hedgehogs fled in terror as a volley of rogue rockets rained down from the sky.

And what about the environmental dangers? Researchers at the University of Lancaster found that Bonfire Night contributes up to 14% of the dioxins (pollutants linked to cancer) present in the atmosphere – estimated to be the same amount of dioxins as British Steel produces in a year.

While bonfires are mostly to blame for the dioxins, those fireworks are hardly guilt-free. When they go pop, CO2, other gases and chemical residues are given off. Gunpowder is a common component, leading to the emission of sulphur compounds, while metal oxides and particulate matter (small particles that can irritate the eyes, nose and throat or even penetrate the lung tissue, causing problems for asthmatics) are also blasted into the atmosphere.

But this isn't quite enough to put me off the annual spectacle. And this devil-may-care attitude is backed by a study of fireworks by Dr Robertus Vichmann, of Braunschweig Technical University, which concludes, "They didn't give off very

much dioxins, so it's not dangerous to man and also not dangerous to environment…

So you can have your fun with it." Was it

just me who read that in a halting German accent?

But not everyone likes fireworks. The Ban the Bang campaign (www. looking-glass.co.uk/banthebang) objects on the grounds of distress caused to pets and wild animals, a valid point that brings to mind a firework I'd seen advertised, called the Screecher, which promises "ear-piercing, squawking shrieks". Then there's the oft-ignored littering aspect: earlier this year, Terry McDonald's bid for a record-breaking firework launch was halted when Jersey's environment department warned him that he could be prosecuted for any damage. "All fireworks contain a cocktail of potentially harmful chemicals," he was told. "In addition, the litter caused by the 111,000 spent rockets could seriously affect the amenity of the beach if not removed." Quite.

Meanwhile, eco-minded scientists at the University of Munich have been working on creating non-polluting, smoke-free fireworks, but you'll be hard-pressed to find these in the shops.

I've lost the urge to host my own garden fireworks display, but I know I'll be watching the pyrotechnic pandemonium of the local 'organised' event. It's a black mark on the eco score chart, but I can't resist the snap, crackle and pop spectacular.