A review of deadly accidents involving fireworks in Denmark
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
A review of deadly accidents involving fireworks in Denmark Alexander Hintze Hillers 1 & Peter Mygind Leth 1 Accepted: 3 August 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The aim of this study was to describe the circumstances surrounding firework-related deaths in Denmark, locate similarities and compare findings to the other known literature. Autopsy files, including police reports, located through searches in the archives of the three Danish institutes of forensic medicine were accessed. Data describing the age, gender, toxicology findings, circumstances of the accident, cause of death, autopsy findings and type of fireworks were examined. Eight cases involving firework-related deaths matched the search criteria, two of which occurred on New Year’s Eve. An unknown number of cases that had not been autopsied were confirmed to exist. Data from the included cases suggested that using illegal fireworks, being male and handling fireworks directly played a key role in deaths. Most notably, illegal fireworks account for few injuries overall but caused the most deaths found in this study. Firework-related deaths are a rare occurrence. Autopsy findings often reveal blast wave injury to be the cause of death. Only one of the eight decedents included in this study were intoxicated with alcohol. Thus it can be assumed that powerful illegal fireworks are, by themselves, a risk factor for a deadly accident, independent of alcohol intoxication. Keywords Fireworks . Death . Injury . Denmark . Accident . Autopsy
Introduction The celebration of New Year’s Eve goes hand in hand with fireworks, set off by both professional pyro technicians and private consumers all around the world. Unfortunately, along with the festivities, a series of injuries are caused by accidents and recklessness when handling these explosives. All fireworks injuries occurring on either December 31st or January 1st in Denmark have been registered since New Year’s Eve 1995/1996 by the Accident Analysis Group (Ulykkesanalysegruppen, UAG). Between 1995/1996 and 2006/2007, 4447 firework-related injuries were reported [1]. The most common areas of injury have consistently been found to be the hands, followed by the head/neck and, finally, the eyes [1–3]. Only 5 out of the 4447 registered Danish incidents resulted in the death of the injured subject. The United States Consumer Product Safety Commission found a similar low proportion of only 5 deaths
* Peter Mygind Leth [email protected] 1
Department of Forensic Medicine, University of Southern Denmark, J.B. Winsløws Vej 17B, DK-5000 Odense C, Denmark
out of 9100 fireworks-related injuries in 2018 [4], while a Finnish study found that only 1% of explosions involving fireworks proved fatal [5]. As stated above, death as a result of injuries caused by fireworks is a rare occurrence, and limited literature comparing such cases exists. At the same time, due to the rarity of these types of accidents, they often tend to receive national media attention in De
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