The New Straits Times, Feburary 7, 1997
Q: Can you explain the health hazards of fireworks?
A: FIREWORKS are made of many hazardous chemicals, for example, chlorate, barium and nitrate salts, sulphur and so on. Below are some of the chemicals used, and the review of their hazards to health.
Chlorate-based mixtures and perchlorate compositions are hazardous because of their low-ignition temperatures. Their flash and sound compositions must be considered dangerous and have killed many people at fireworks manufacturing plants in the United States, China and other countries.
This includes Malaysia, the prime example being the Sungai Buloh incident in Selangor in the late 1980s.
Chlorates are principally toxic by inhalation and ingestion. They are potent oxidising agents; exposure may result in haemolysis - the destruction of red blood cells - with methaemoglobin formation.
Chlorates are directly nephrotoxic; acute renal failure may also be noted. Other symptoms include vomiting and abnominal pain.
A person can be exposed to barium compounds through inhalation and accidental ingestion. The soluble barium salts contained in firecrackers can cause vomiting, abdominal pain, bloody diarrhoea, shallow breathing, convulsion, coma and death from respiratory or cardiac failure.
Inhalation may produce a benign pneumoconiosis, a lung disease caused by inhaling dust. Other important signs and symptoms of barium poisoning include muscular paralysis, arterial hypertension and profound hypokalaemia.
Exposure to nitrate compounds is through inhalation. This can cause corrosion of the skin and other tissues from topical contact and acute pulmonary oedema or chronic obstructive lung disease from inhalation.
Although nitrates are generally not absorbed in toxic amounts from skin contact, it may be significantly absorbed in burned areas of the skin. Chronic exposure of more than 5mg/kg/day is considered unacceptable. It has been reported that people suffering from serious burn wounds develop severe methaemoglobinemia after being accidentally sprayed with a molten mixture of potassium and sodium nitrates.
The severity of the illness that results is attributed to nitrites which can be generated from the nitrates when exposed to extremely high temperatures. Common findings associated with nitrate poisoning include unconsciousness, dizziness, fatigue, shortness of breath nausea, vomiting, hypotension and headache.
Exposure to sulphur compounds is through inhalation. Poisoning by sulphur compounds manifests itself with a number of clinical symptoms. It can irritant the skin, eyes, lungs and gastrointestinal tract. Acute inhalation of sulphur powder or dust may result in shortness of breath coughing, tightness and feeling of burning in the chest. Molten sulphur may also cause severe skin and age.
The cost of treating a fire work injury far outweights the cost of a single firework package. The average hospital emergency room and ward charges will cause the public and Government hundreds or even thousand of ringgit. That's only the fiscal cost. What about the human one?
As fireworks are unpredictable, injuries and poisonings can occur even the person is careful or under supervision. The best way to avoid injury and accidental poisoning is not to keep or use fireworks.
