Isn’t it time we banned firecrackers?

I MAY not always agree with Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte‘s strong-arm style of local governance. But one thing that I do completely approve of — aside from the serious implementation of the no-smoking policy in Davao’s public places — is his enforcement of a total firecracker ban in the city.

Now on its fifth year, the prohibition on the manufacture, sale, distribution, possession or use of firecrackers and other pyrotechnic devices in Davao has successfully reduced the casualty count from firecracker-related deaths and injuries among Davaoeños to practically zero.

Compare that to other areas in the country, particularly Metro Manila, where year after year the New Year is greeted with scores of people dead from firecracker blasts, watusi (dancing firecrackers) ingestion, and stray bullets, even as hundreds more end up being scarred for life — with severed fingers and other extremities, impaired eyesight, and unsightly burns, not to mention being rendered homeless by fires caused by wayward paputok.

It’s not going to be any different this year, I thought when I retired to bed last night amid the irritating crackle of firecrackers of all sorts in the gunpowder-suffused air of our Tandang Sora neighborhood. This morning, I did wake up to the anticipated news of the usual deaths and injuries. Initial reports by GMANews.tv placed the casualties at three persons killed and 389 more injured in last night’s maddening run-up to the New Year.

Meanwhile, the Department of Health‘s tally of injured people has risen to 907, of whom 870 were victimized by firecrackers and 35 by stray bullets.

In last year’s New Year’s revelry, the DOH recorded three deaths and injuries to 610 people due to firecrackers and stray bullets from December 21, 2005 to January 1, 2006. There were eight fatalities and 585 reported cases of injuries during the same time frame the previous year.

The statistics have been hovering above 500 in the past years (629 in 2001, 530 in 2002, 590 in 2003), except in 2000, which heralded the beginning of a new millennium, when the health department reported 1,279 firecracker-related cases.

The make of firecrackers and other pyrotechnic devices has also been evolving, becoming more fatal each year. Two recent additions to the Pinoy’s noisemaking arsenal that have caused more injuries in the last two years are the “boga,” an improvised cannon made out of PVC pipes which uses denatured alcohol as fuel, and the “piccolo,” a firecracker that, when lit, tends to explode faster than any other pyrotechnics.

Last year, the boga, noted Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, was responsible for 99 cases of eye injuries sustained by victims of firecracker blasts.

Of course, Davao too had been no stranger to this perennial chaos. Before the imposition of the ban, the Davao Medical Center, for instance, recorded 47 firecracker-related injuries in 1998, 59 in 1999, and 88 in 2000.

With the ban in place in 2001, complemented by a city ordinance (Ordinance No. 060-02) passed by the Sangguniang Panglungsod the following year, the number of firecracker-related injuries has dramatically gone down — from only two from December 21, 2001 to January 4, 2002 to zero in the succeeding years, including this yearend’s festivities.

Download text of the ordinance banning firecrackers in Davao City.

For sure as well, the ordinance did not initially sit well with Davaoeños, who were accustomed to celebrating the Christmas season like the rest of us — with firecrackers. But considering the costly price they have to pay every time, they soon learned to cope with the Yuletide holidays sans the deafening din of fatal pyrotechnics. They have since replaced these with the sound of children carolers, blowing of torotots (horns), banging of metallic household items, and the drum beats of students competing in a cheer-dance contest to accompany merriment all the way to New Year’s Eve.

Click here for a PCIJ podcast on a firecracker-free Davao.

For non-Davaoeños, it should also help to be enlightened about firecrackers not only in terms of the external injuries that can be sustained but also as a cause of air and noise pollution.

Findings of a study by Toxics Link on the health hazards posed by firecrackers in connection with the Hindu festival of Divali, known as the “Festival of Lights” which has become associated with firecrackers and fireworks, have confirmed these.

The study pointed to firecrackers as causing the following:

• an increase in toxic fumes and gases like carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, as well as suspended particulate matter (SPM), in the air;

• an increase in noise pollution above 125 decibel (dB), which is above the tolerable limits, and can cause deafness;

• an increase in incidents of respiratory diseases such as acute bouts of asthma, bronchitis and heart attacks.

It was also found that the chemical composition of firecrackers show highly toxic heavy metals like cadmium and lead in addition to other metals like copper, manganese, zinc, sodium, magnesium and potassium that have known harmful effects in humans when inhaled or ingested.

The DOH has time and again advised against the use of fireworks and firecrackers, urging the public to opt for more innovative ways to create noise on New Year’s Eve in keeping with the tradition of driving bad luck away. But, as we’ve witnessed every year, its annual Oplan: Iwas Paputok (or the Fourmula Kontra Paputok) can only do so much.

To my mind, an ordinance banning firecrackers that is similar to Davao’s is a more effective way of preventing firecracker-related deaths and injuries. Alas, where it’s ought to be applied though, political will is a scarce resource among many of our government officials.