For some, the twinkling lights and loud firecrackers are a must on New Year’s Eve, for others a nuisance. The following applies to everyone: In view of the full hospitals, New Year’s Eve 2021/22 will be largely free of firecrackers.
Berlin – Now it’s official: New Year’s Eve is getting quieter again. The sale of firecrackers and fireworks on New Year’s Eve is banned nationwide.
The federal and state governments decided that yesterday. Even those who already have rockets and firecrackers should have to do without them in certain busy places. Firing a rocket is generally not recommended in order to avoid stressing the clinics from injured persons. The reactions to the ban are mixed: While animal and environmentalists, among others, are happy about the absence of the noisy firecrackers, for others a popular New Year’s Eve tradition falls into the water again.
For the Association of the Pyrotechnic Industry (VPI), the occupancy of the hospitals is not an argument in favor of the sales ban: In other years, more patients in the emergency rooms are not to blame for legal New Year’s fireworks, but rather too much alcohol and illegal fireworks products. The firecrackers manufacturers even warn of a “death knell for the entire fireworks industry in Germany”.
The frustration of other firework fans is also great: “I wait 364 days or 730 days … and then something like that. That really hurts me, “writes an Instagram user. “I don’t understand how such an old tradition is banned. One day doesn’t change anything on the other 364 days when the environment is polluted, ”writes another.
The German Environmental Aid (DUH), on the other hand, campaigned for a firecracker ban in November, together with the police union (GdP), some doctors and animal rights activists. After all, there are many people injured by firecrackers and rockets, animals are stressed by the noise, the environment is polluted and the fine dust pollution from black powder is high. DUH managing director Jürgen Resch now praised the decision, but also called for the burning of fireworks to be banned across the board, also in future years.
According to the decision taken on Thursday, municipalities must determine in which particularly popular locations no fireworks may be set off, but there is no blanket ban this year either. But there should be assembly bans.
Aerosol researcher Gerhard Scheuch considers this to be counterproductive: “Because these meetings will of course take place indoors and we know that the risk of infection is many times higher indoors than outdoors.” The data clearly showed this. “We have to pay more attention to indoor air hygiene, we have to be careful not to get infected indoors, we have to make people aware that they are more careful indoors – that they meet fewer people, that meetings are shorter, open the windows and ventilate more and actually go outside more. ”dpa
