Diwali Fireworks: Early Signs of Impact on PM10 Properties of Rural Brahmaputra Valley

The festival of Diwali and it associated fireworks, which were not so common in the past, are slowly penetrating into rural Brahmaputra Valley. PM10 monitoring was done during the 2009 Diwali festivities at a rural site in the Brahamputra Valley of Northeast India. Sampling of PM10 was done on a 12 hourly basis for an extended period of 13 consecutive days. The mean PM10 concentration during the monitoring campaign was found to be 40.88 ± 19 µg/m3 and the maximum concentration of PM10 was recorded on the Pre-Diwali night. Elemental and ionic constituents of PM10 were analyzed by ICP-OES and Ion Chromatograph (IC), respectively. The ratio of ∑anions to ∑cations was found to be 1.26 for the study period, which is indicative of a cation deficient condition. Pearson’s correlation and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) were carried out to trace the impact of Diwali celebrations. In addition, the elemental enrichments due to Diwali fireworks, which we term Diwali Induced Enrichments (DIE) were calculated for the festival day samples. DIE showed marginal enrichment of elements and ions, indicating the beginning of the impact of Diwali in the rural areas of the region.