Fireworks are inherently dangerous, and those dangers are costly. It’s important to understand the safety risks and damage fireworks cause, especially “consumer” or “backyard” fireworks.*

Since 2008, 6 additional states have legalized the discharge of consumer-grade fireworks and during that same period of time, serious injuries increased by 75%, from 2.3 injuries per 100,000 population in 2008 to 4.0 injuries per 100,000 populations in 2017.

A study concluded that fireworks-related injuries have increased in states that loosen restrictions in their fireworks laws and that there were approximately 90,257 fireworks-related burn injuries among pediatric patients from 2006-2012. (Source)

After Iowa’s first summer of legal consumer fireworks use after a decades-long ban, a study by the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics Department of Emergency Medicine, in association with the Injury Prevention Research Center and the Department of Surgery, show injuries due to backyard fireworks increased by 163% over the previous three-year average. (Source)

Fireworks were involved in 12,900 injuries treated in US hospital emergency departments in 2017, which is an increase from the prior 3 years. At least 8 were non-occupational fireworks-related deaths. Two-thirds of those injuries were the result of aerial devices.

8,700 patients, or 67% of people treated for fireworks-related injuries, occurred during the one-month period surrounding the Fourth of July Holiday in 2017.

Fireworks cause over 17,000 fires nationwide each year and tens of millions of dollars in damage. From 2015-2017, NC fire departments reported $ 1,704,877 total fire losses associated with fireworks. (Source)

The risk of fireworks injury is highest for young people ages 5-9, followed by children 10-19. (Source)

Nearly half of all fireworks injuries are to innocent bystanders, many of them children. Of the 12,900 fireworks-related injuries last year, 36% of those injuries were to children under the age of 15, or nearly 4,644 children.

From 2009-2013, U.S. fire departments responded to an average of 18,500 fires caused by fireworks.

In 2017, 14% of patients injured by fireworks were hospitalized. This percentage of patients hospitalized from fireworks was higher than the percentage of those hospitalized for injuries from any other type of consumer product.

The National Fire Protection Association definitively states that “there’s no safe way to use consumer fireworks” and states that it has “no safety standards for retail sales, associated storage, or the use of consumer fireworks by the general public.” (Source)

Staff from CPSC’s Office of Import Surveillance and Office of Compliance and Field Operations, in cooperation with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”), conducts surveillance on imported shipments of consumer fireworks. With assistance from CBP, CPSC staff selectively sampled and tested shipments of imported fireworks in fiscal year 2017, for compliance with the FHSA. Approximately 31 percent of the selected and tested shipments were found to contain fireworks that were banned hazardous substances because they were non-compliant with FHSA. The majority of violations centered on violations for fuse performance requirements and overloaded report composition.

The National Fire Protection Agency states that almost half (47%) of the reported fires on the Fourth of July were started by fireworks. (Source)

The average cost of an ER visit is $400/hour (not inclusive of physician’s bills, labs, and x-rays); the cost of a burn floor bed (non-ICU) per day is $1,500 – $3,200; the cost of a burn ICU bed per day is $6,500 – $10,000. (Source)