I give points for the interesting method of comparison. I've never seen pollution measured in units of cigarettes before.

This presentation brings questions to my mind. A standard fireworks presentation might have 200 individual fireworks, so if we take the middle of the chart there and multiply by 200 we get about 5.5 million ug/m3 (about 260k cigs).

At the same time, how many people are watching and smoking? India has a smoking rate of about 27%, so if 100k people are watching and the average amount of smokers have 2 or 3 cigs during the show (say, 2.5 on average), that's just under 68k cigarettes.

The actual cigarette smoking is *still* significant relative to the fireworks. Also, firework pollution is going to be largely at altitude I'd expect (** I don't know, maybe in India they set off those giant-ass crowd pleasers at ground level, but where I am, they don't **) whereas actual smoking pollution is in the faces of the other 73% of the crowd watching.

What this means, realistically, is that while fireworks pollute, it's smokers' pollution you mostly breathe at a fireworks show, but let's face it... anything you inhale at a fireworks show is probably not good for you.