“It was going off everywhere,” said Richard Duncan about backyard fireworks being shot into the air in Riverside. “It was like a war zone.”
Duncan, like many residents, noticed a lack of visibility and hazy conditions the following morning.
“I noticed it seemed like it was foggy, but that wasn’t the fog.”
The South Coast Air Quality Management District issued the alert. South Coast AQMD officials say fireworks are known to emit high levels of PM2.5 and PM10 particulate matter. They say breathing those particulates can lead to a wide variety of cardiovascular and respiratory health effects such as heart attacks, asthma aggravation, decreased lung function, coughing and difficulty breathing.
Fireworks light up the sky over Southern California
Other air quality experts believe the air quality is even worse this year following the 4th of July than it was in 2021.
“I know that this year is worse than last year by about 20%,” said Glory Dolphin Hammes, CEO of IQAir North America. “There are a lot of factors that go into that; the main factor is the lack of winds that can take this particulate matter and sweep it away.”
Hammes said when there’s a lack of prevailing wind, the particulates get trapped in Southern California because of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountain ranges. She also said that the particulates left behind by fireworks can be even worse than the pollution caused by combustion engines in vehicles.
“It’s a lot of bad stuff all together,” said Hammes. “I could tell you there’s sulfur; there’s a lot of metals involved, it’s essentially a lot of toxic chemicals in the air.”
But by mid-afternoon, conditions had already started improving.
According to the South Coast ACMD, a large stretch of Southern California from Thousand Oaks all the way to the Inland Empire was dealing with “unhealthy” air quality. But by lunchtime, most of those areas were in the “moderate” range.
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