Beware, A Study Revealed That Fireworks Contain Dangerous Levels of Lead and Other Toxins

News24xx.com - According to a new study, some commercially available fireworks contain dangerous levels of lead and other toxins. The result based on the researchers at New York University's Grossman School of Medicine that bought 12 types of popular, commercially-available fireworks, including the Black Cuckoo, the Color Changing Wheel, and the Blue Storm firecracker.

At that time, the team set off the fireworks in a stainless steel chamber, then extracted particles that were small enough to get into the lungs, testing them on rodents and samples of human tissue. They found that two of the fireworks had harmful levels of lead, with the Black Cuckoo fireworks being the most toxic.

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With some counties still planning July 4 fireworks celebrations, and the amount of illegal fireworks complaints soaring in cities, the long term exposure to fireworks may be damaging, was alarming to study author Terry Gordon, a professor in the Department of Environmental Medicine at NYU Langone Health.

"I was shocked that there was this much lead in the samples," Gordon told.

The idea for the study, which was published in Particle and Fibre Toxicology Journal, began several years ago, while Gordon was watching Disney fireworks special with his son, who suggested that testing the fireworks for toxins could be a great high school research project. 

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The high school research project eventually morphed into a project for Gordon and his graduate students, who spent about USD 100 on 12 different kinds of fireworks at a retail store, and set about lighting them up to test.