Park Service Warns Public To Avoid Breathing While Watching DC's July 4th Fireworks
Trump is managing to fuck up even this.
Do you live in our nation’s fair capital of Washington DC? If not, were you planning on traveling there this weekend to watch the annual Fourth of July festivities and fireworks on the National Mall? Great! Have fun! Take the usual precautions. Stay hydrated — the District’s heat and humidity in the summer are no joke! Don’t drink and drive. The crowds might be overwhelming, so be kind and patient with others. Particularly the public servants trying to keep things moving — they are giving up their holiday so you can enjoy yours!
Finally, wear a respirator at all times, as if you were spraying your house for termites or mining minerals on an asteroid. Wait, what?
Yes, wear a respirator. Because according to the Washington Post, the massive fireworks display is expected to produce so much air pollution that the National Park Service itself suggests — in internal documents because why actually warn the public of the danger — people “remain indoors as much as possible during and after the show.”
Stay inside during the fireworks? What’s the point of having the largest fireworks display ever if you can’t go outside to watch the goddamn thing?
Yes, the largest fireworks show in history, allegedly. This year’s display will involve firing off somewhere around 850,000 fireworks from various locations around the city. Normally, the July Fourth show features about 20,000. The numbers and timeframe are so ridiculous that a data scientist calculated how many fireworks that is per second (354) and how many you will miss every time you blink. (Between 35 and 142.)
But this is America’s 250th birthday and Donald Trump’s people are in charge of it. So of course it must be so huge that it is dangerous, irresponsible, unnecessary, and indicates our president is overcompensating for something.
How bad is it likely to get? Let us put it this way. The big fear is exposure to PM2.5, which are inhalable particulates 2.5 microns or smaller in diameter, small enough that they can settle into the deepest part of the lungs. The ambient air quality standard defines how much of it can be in the air without “harming human health.” The Biden administration had set the national standard at 9 micrograms per cubic meter outdoors. The Trump administration loosened that to 12 micrograms per cubic meter last year.
The Post says the “most likely” scenario is the fireworks will generate 600 to 1,200 micrograms of PM2.5 per cubic meter around the Mall. Worst case calls for as much as 2,000 micrograms of PM2.5. Depending on wind and weather conditions, that concentration may hover in the air for three to six hours after the show ends.
NPS says this level of PM2.5 is enough to cause “irritation symptoms” and people “should avoid prolonged exposure” to the air around the Mall. And by “irritation symptoms,” they mean asthma attacks, among other things. So if you have asthma and you are in the DC area on Saturday, uh, maybe don’t be.
One climate scientist on BlueSky noted that the Fourth is already the worst air pollution day in DC, by very far. And that is during a normal year:
Hilariously, the NPS recommends people wear n95 masks outdoors during and after the show. Considering how badly MAGA freaked out at mask mandates during the COVID pandemic, one can only imagine how upset the cuckoo bonkers dipshits will be if they see people walking around the National Mall wearing n95s so you can’t see their mouths making ooh and aah sounds at the display. Bethany Mandel might have a stroke. Maybe the Nazis she once suggested we all befriend will send flowers to her hospital room.
To make it all the worse, the display isn’t expected to start until 10:30 or 11 p.m. instead of the usual 9:30. Why so late? Because President Caligula has turned this whole event into a Trump rally. He’s taking the stage at 9 o’clock to give one of his usual incoherent, discombobulated speeches, during which he will likely meander from topic to topic like an escaped nursing home patient.
And all this during a heatwave. Score! Trump is even bragging about how long he’s going to speak in the heat. Considering he’s 80 and has enough mysterious health ailments to keep literally a couple of dozen doctors busy during his physical, this very much seems like a case where someone should say to him, “Hey Icarus, I don’t think those wings will hold up.”
So. Imagine you normally love the Fourth of July in DC — the fireworks, the outdoor concert by military bands and the National Symphony Orchestra playing patriotic songs, the kids running around having fun. This year, if you go, the temperature will be somewhere around 100 degrees, the fireworks start late after a long, self-aggrandizing and partisan Trump speech and go at least twice as long as normal, and you are risking respiratory failure to be there.
Oh, and rules prohibit you from bringing lawn chairs, coolers, or more than one bottle of water onto the Mall. Sounds like great fun for the whole family.
But what if you live in DC, won’t go anywhere near the Mall on July 4th, and you are a member of a racial minority? Well, tough shit for you:
Another internal document designed to take demographics in the area into account advises Park Service staff to “not treat race, ethnicity, income, disability, age, or language as risks by themselves.”
The fireworks are planned to be set off at sites along the Potomac River and the National Mall, not far from areas such as Southeast Washington that are predominantly Black and lower-income.
Trump’s people are so afraid of the dreaded letters DEI that they are even making sure no one worries about the poor and disabled and elderly during an event particularly dangerous to human health.
Of course, as a professor of health noted to the Post, we know that healthcare disparities and disparities in exposure to environmental toxins and power plants and whatnot mean that respiratory and cardiovascular problems are more prevalent in minority neighborhoods. This is one of those facts that, if you point it out, wingnuts will freak out and accuse you of saying that trees are racist or something.
Between this and COVID, how many of the nation’s lungs will Donald Trump be responsible for destroying when all is said and done? Possibly all of them! He’s already leaving so much of the country worse off, and now we can add “exponentially increasing every American’s risk of respiratory system collapse” to the pile. What a country!
OPEN THREAD!
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JFC that is depressing.
Stay inside, windows closed, A/C on and watch Jaws with us for Movie Night.
the sound of the A/C and screaming in fear of a killer shark will also help block out scary noises for your pets!
"somewhere around 850,000 fireworks from various locations around the city."
Fuck anyone with PTSD and all the animals, I guess; the Felon needs his big booms.