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Fireworks: boon or bane to our eyes?

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Abstract

Fireworks are an integral aspect of national, cultural and religious festivals globally, featuring in a vast range of celebrations including Diwali in India and New Year’s Eve in the USA. We have seen a trend in eye injuries related to the use of fireworks, with millions of people, of which a large proportion comprising children, are injured annually—and rather than falling, as one would hope, this number is remaining stable. A comprehensive study of the impact of firework-related injuries to the eye is not available, and the efforts to mitigate this are not widely discussed in the literature. This literature review therefore focusses on studying the impact of firework-related eye injuries, the effect of legislation on mitigating these injuries and their associated morbidity.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ophthalmology, National Healthcare Group Eye Institute, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Novena, Singapore

    Preethi Jeyabal & Rupesh Agrawal

  2. University of Birmingham Medical School, Birmingham, UK

    Lalita Davies

  3. Instituto Oftalmologico Libertador, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Andres Rousselot

Authors
  1. Preethi Jeyabal
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  2. Lalita Davies
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  3. Andres Rousselot
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  4. Rupesh Agrawal
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rupesh Agrawal.

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Jeyabal, P., Davies, L., Rousselot, A. et al. Fireworks: boon or bane to our eyes?. Int Ophthalmol 39, 2407–2411 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10792-018-1054-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10792-018-1054-4

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