Poll: Will you buy fireworks this year?
Every Fourth of July the warnings go out, and every year, people end up in emergency rooms with burns, breaks, ears that can’t hear and eyes that can’t see.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that in 2006, the last year with complete numbers,
• 11 people died from fireworks accidents.
• About 9,200 were treated in emergency rooms for fireworks injuries.
• About 5 percent of fireworks injuries required hospitalization.
• More than two-thirds of fireworks injuries occurred between June 16 and July 16.
• One of every three people injured were children under 15 years old.
• Three times as many males were injured as females.
• People 20 and under sustained 47 percent of all injuries from fireworks.
• People using fireworks were more likely to be injured than bystanders.
In the face of those statistics — and knowing exponentially more injuries never get reported,
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I've written exclusively about health since the inception of the Health & Fitness section. I'm an off-road biker, altitude hiker and was into adventure sports until a fall down a Colorado mountain turned my lower back into abstract art. But I'm coming back. 
I work for ophthalmologists (eye surgeons) and you would not believe how many times they are called into the ER for eye injuries every 4th of July. The week after the holiday our office is jumping with people of all ages who took a bottle rocket to the eye. Hello, there are no eye transplants available. If you lose an eye, you don’t get another one, except for maybe a glass one. Bottle rockets and roman candles etc…love eyes and fingers! Please just go watch a professional fireworks show!!
Waste… of… money
Fireworks are an American tradition and custom that many families enjoy to celebrate our freedom. You should only buy and use fireworks that are approved by the U.S. government. There are millions of Americans who use them safely and properly. I am proud to be an American and plan to show my patriotism by getting together with family and friends on July 4th, cooking out and having a personal fireworks display. God bless America!
Go somewhere and watch a supervised fireworks display. Why should I have to pick up your patriotism left all over my yard?
Truthefully, I hate that these are sold to people who will happily drink from around 6pm until darkness falls just to show their patriotism. So there they are with a minimum of 3 hrs of beer in their system, no common sense among them, kids everywhere and with inebriated purpose reach for two things - an exploding bomb and a lighter. The only thing worse then hearing several boxes of these annoying firecrackers in my residential area (past midnight I might add) is having the same crackers light them at New Years.
I enjoy watching fireworks at a professional show. I do not enjoy having my home shelled by drunken neighbors. Somehow, the corner I live on has become the site where several neighbors congregate to literally set fire to thousands of their hard earned dollars every year.
We usually go out of town and come home to clogged gutters and a field of debris. Some years we even have damage to items in our yard, such as the huge hole burned in our swing. (Thank goodness it didn’t spread to the nearby deck.) Of course, there’s no way to know who shot off the offending explosives, so we’re left cleaning, repairing, and replacing things ourselves. At least no one has been injured, so far.
In spite of all the personal and property damage, it is amazing that fireworks sales are still allowed, at least in rural Missouri…. and for some reason, St. Charles County officials still act like they are a rural county!!