Washington DC woke up Sunday to the worst air quality of any major city on Earth, not because of a factory fire or a chemical spill, but because of a fireworks show.
President Trump’s record-setting July 4 display, organized by the pro-Trump group Freedom 250 to mark America’s 250th anniversary, fired 850,000 shells over about 40 minutes on the National Mall. The pyrotechnics contractor, Pyrotecnico, was aiming for a world record. They got one, just not the kind they advertised.
The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments issued a “code purple” alert, “very unhealthy” for the entire population, covering the District, parts of Maryland, and Northern Virginia. IQAir, the Swiss firm that tracks global pollution, ranked Washington the sixth-most-polluted city in the world on Sunday, behind only Lahore, Pakistan, and ahead of every other major urban center.
Detroit, Chicago, and Minneapolis also recorded dangerous pollution levels overnight from their own July 4 displays, but nowhere was as bad as the capital.
The warnings were ignored
The National Park Service had warned this would happen. Internal documents obtained by the Washington Post before the event showed NPS models predicting “very unhealthy” air quality across downtown DC, Arlington, and Capitol Hill. The report recommended that residents “wear an N95 mask when outdoors” and “remain indoors as much as possible during and after the show.“
The Trump administration ignored the warnings. The show went ahead, delayed by several hours due to thunderstorms on July 4, and finally fired on the evening of July 5.
By midnight, the pollution monitors were spiking. By Sunday morning, DC had the kind of air quality usually associated with coal-burning cities in developing countries.
“Several experts had warned that such a volume of fire concentrated over just 40 minutes risked causing a spectacular deterioration in air quality,” reported Franceinfo, which covered the story alongside local US media.
Who is responsible
Freedom 250 is a private organization close to the Trump administration. It contracted Pyrotecnico to break the world record for fireworks launched in a single display. The event was part of a broader July 4 celebration that included a long speech by Trump, who used the occasion to hail America’s greatness and attack “communists” at home and abroad.
The costs of the cleanup, medical, environmental, and logistical, will be borne by DC residents and the federal government. The air quality alerts remained in effect through Sunday evening, with a heat advisory also in place as temperatures climbed into the triple digits. That combination, heat plus toxic air, is particularly dangerous for older adults, children, and people with respiratory conditions.
By Monday, air quality began improving. But the episode raised a question that received little official attention: who approved a fireworks display on this scale without requiring pollution controls, and who will answer for the fact that Washington’s air was briefly among the worst in the world?
The answer, so far, is no one.