To celebrate America is to celebrate her freedom from Britain, her independence, and her ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Fourth of July celebrations were rampant across the country yesterday, yet in their patriotic midst, Americans ironically left debris and litter everywhere, littering the very country they were celebrating.
I celebrated by watching fireworks on Long Island's Jones Beach. After the ecstatically patriotic fireworks display exploded over the ocean waves, golf carts with their headlights on drove across the beach, illuminating a polluted eyesore that shocked me: people had left behind a dizzying amount of beer cans, water bottles, pizza boxes, half eaten apples, plastic bags, and every other disgusting remnant you could think of. This waste was destined to become flotsam in the ocean or an unfortunate crab or seagull's lunch. Plastic has been found "...in 62 percent of all seabirds, in 100 percent of sea turtle species, and in 25 percent of fish sampled from seafood markets around the world" (Ocean Conservancy). Most worryingly, young kids were throwing their glow sticks into the ocean following the fireworks display.
The sheer amount of litter at the one celebration I attended was alarming; this is frightening when one takes into account how littered America's beaches must get during the fourth of July. That beach workers pick up the trash after the celebrations are over isn't reassuring at all: many of the litter will get swallowed up by the ocean before the trash can be picked up and disposed of. Also worrying is the precedent of the act of littering: that Americans think it's okay to leave their trash wherever.
Operation SPLASH, an environmental organization on Long Island, has cited that they have "...collected more than 2 million pounds of trash and marine debris from the beaches and waterways of Long Island..." over the past 30 years. The most common form of litter according to Ocean Conservancy are cigarette butts; these contain "...hundreds of chemical compounds that leach from the filters as soon as they get wet".
Fireworks also add to the 4th of July environmental destruction, and scientists are also beginning to understand what the particulates and aluminum in fireworks mean for human health. Fireworks "...often contain carcinogenic or hormone-disrupting substances that seep into soil and water" and leave behind "...lung-clogging smoke". Take one look at fireworks, and anyone can come to the conclusion that they cannot be doing the environment or our own healthy any benefits. After the fireworks display, the Jones Beach coastline and horizon was left obscured in a Pompeii-like dark gray cloud.
That firework displays only happen a few times a year is good but does not make the environment or our health exempt from their destruction. The toxic debris left behind by fireworks rains down on our oceans, bays, lakes, and rivers. Perchlorates, present in fireworks, can "...limit the human thyroid gland's ability to take iodine from the bloodstream" in high enough doses. Low doses don't hurt anyone, but the true effects are still unclear.
Fireworks also contain heavy metals, which give them their radiant color. Metals themselves are not good for human health, and fireworks contain strontium (red), aluminum (white), copper (blue), barium (green), rubidium (purple), and cadmium.
The best we can do here is not litter on the beach. Litter should leave the beach exactly as it came, and the temptation to litter may be curbed by bringing nondisposable items to the beach, such as containers with lids.
