Fireworks
2023-12-31 Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL and Lakeland-Winter Haven, FL and Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL fireworks episode
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 64 µg/m³ near Miami across 3 covered metros home to 10 million people. 3 metros placed a top-ten day in their record.
Counting the extra PM2.5 above each metro's typical day, this event handed the average affected resident ≈ 3.1 cigarettes. Across everyone living in the affected metros, that is the collective equivalent of ≈ 32 million cigarettes. An awareness illustration of outdoor exposure at 22 µg/m³ per cigarette (Berkeley Earth), counting only the event's ranked days; not a medical dose.
Episode peak
-- cigarettes
The smoke map's scale, replayed over this event: the surface interpolates between covered metros' daily records, framed to the affected region. Hover for a reading, click a metro to pin it to the card. Days a monitor did not report draw nothing.
What happened, in the record
Qualified supplied evidence supports fireworks as the root cause of this event. The supplied record does not establish a coherent shared occurrence with neighboring candidates, so the episode remains event-specific.
Sequence: Miami (Dec 31) → Orlando (Jan 1) → Lakeland (Jan 1)
Affected metros
| Metro | Peak PM2.5 | Cigarettes, whole event | Peak day | All-time standing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 64 µg/m³ | 4.6 | Jan 1, 2024 | #3 of its top days |
| Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL | 54.9 µg/m³ | 2.5 | Jan 1, 2024 | #3 of its top days |
| Lakeland-Winter Haven, FL | 37.2 µg/m³ | 1.7 | Jan 1, 2024 | #6 of its top days |
"Cigarettes, whole event" totals a metro's ranked event days at 22 µg/m³ per cigarette: what a person outdoors there breathed across the event, as the illustration. "All-time standing" is where this episode's days sit in each metro's ranked record (worst-area measure, since 1999). Full local context is on each metro's Air Records page.
The evidence
EPA AQS monitor qualifier 5
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier IH — Fireworks. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted informational qualifier (IH, Fireworks.) on 4 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2023-12-31, identifying fireworks as affecting the samples. An informational qualifier is an official submitting-agency flag, not a request for exclusion or an EPA-concurred determination.
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier IH — Fireworks. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted informational qualifier (IH, Fireworks.) on 30 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2024-01-01, identifying fireworks as affecting the samples. An informational qualifier is an official submitting-agency flag, not a request for exclusion or an EPA-concurred determination.
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier IH — Fireworks. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted informational qualifier (IH, Fireworks.) on 52 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2024-01-01, identifying fireworks as affecting the samples. An informational qualifier is an official submitting-agency flag, not a request for exclusion or an EPA-concurred determination.
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier IH — Fireworks. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted informational qualifier (IH, Fireworks.) on 13 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2023-12-31, identifying fireworks as affecting the samples. An informational qualifier is an official submitting-agency flag, not a request for exclusion or an EPA-concurred determination.
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier IH — Fireworks. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted informational qualifier (IH, Fireworks.) on 9 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2024-01-01, identifying fireworks as affecting the samples. An informational qualifier is an official submitting-agency flag, not a request for exclusion or an EPA-concurred determination.
Status and provenance
Research preview: this record carries research-only status and its boundaries, cause, and name may change as evidence review completes. Grouping policy common_sense_root_cause_grouping.v2. The cause label reflects the assembled evidence above, not an IAQng detection formula.