PM10 on New Year’s Eve: The Fireworks Ban in the Data

Average hourly PM10 concentrations at the Untere Grenzstraße monitoring station in Offenbach, measured across three consecutive New Year’s Eves (2018, 2019, 2020).

The 2020/21 fireworks ban (pandemic) is immediately visible: while 2018 and 2019 show the expected massive spike right after midnight, the 2020 line (purple) barely moves. PM10 concentrations on a normal New Year’s Eve can reach several hundred µg/m³ within hours – well above the EU daily limit of 50 µg/m³.

Follow-up with the subsequent year’s data included:

fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(14, 6))

for year, color in [(2018, '#3498db'), (2019, '#e74c3c'), (2020, '#9b59b6')]:
    yearly_data = df[df['year'] == year]
    ax.plot(yearly_data['hour'], yearly_data['pm10'], 
            color=color, label=str(year), linewidth=2)

Data source: HLNUG (Hessisches Landesamt für Naturschutz, Umwelt und Geologie).