The Fire and Explosion Hazard of Coloured Powders Used during the Holi Festival

During the world-famous Holi festival, people throw and smear each other with a colored powder (Holi color, Holi powder, Gulal powder). Until now, adverse health and environmental effects (skin and eye irritation, air pollution, and respiratory problems) have been described in the available literature. However, the literature lacks data on the flammable and explosive properties of these powders during mass events, despite the fact that burns, fires, and explosions during the Holi festival have taken place many times. The aim of the article is to present the fire and explosion parameters of three currently used Holi dust and cornflour dust types as reference dust. The minimum ignition temperature of the dust layer and dust cloud, the maximum explosion pressure and its maximum rate of growth over time, the lower explosion limit, the limit of oxygen concentration, and the minimum ignition energy were determined. Tests confirmed that the currently available Holi powders should be classified as flammable dusts and low-explosive dusts. The likelihood of a fire or explosion during mass incidents involving a Holi dust-air mixture is high.

Holi Festival primavera, cor e semeadura na Índia/São Paulo

Exposição fotográfica sobre o Holi Festival, em São Paulo, realizado pela comunidade hindu nesta cidade. É comemorado em abril, a cada ano, celebrando a chegada da primavera na Índia e a semeadura, com boa sorte.

‘This Is How We Play Holī’

John Cort examines phaguā, a type of song associated with the festival of Holi, stressing the role of allegory in north Indian Digambar Jain songs composed in this form. Phaguā was shared by various traditions of Jainism and Hinduism alike, but each tradition put it to quite a distinct use. For Digambar Jains the antinomian transgressions of the Holi festival presented an ethical problem, so their poets adapted the sensual and sexualized phaguā into a metaphorical description of various aspects of the Self and its struggle for spiritual realization. Digambar poets such as Banarasidas and Dhyanatray ‘tamed’ Holi by turning its poetic and musical tradition into a didactic dissertation on discipline, even while retaining the narrative elements (separated lovers, seasonal fecundity, and so on) that were put to more erotic use in other traditions.

Aerosols Characterization during the Holi festival in Dehradun: Foothills of the Himalayas, India

In this study, Partisol 2300 speciation sampler and ICP-OES were used for determining the mass and elemental composition of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) during Holi festival week 13th March 2014 to 20th March 2014 at Dehradun, India. Chemical analysis for 15 elements (Fe, Ni, Cr, Mn, Cu, Zn, Cd, As, Pb, Na, K, Al, Mg, Sb and Ca) were carried out with the collected samples (n=8). The order of concentration of chemical species during holi festival days were K>Fe>Na>Mn>Mg>Cr> Zn>Ca>Al>Cu>As>Pb>Ni>Sb>Cd. Aethalometer was used for determining the Black Carbon (BC) concentration and percentage of black carbon contributed by the biomass burning (BB). The average mass concentration of PM2.5 and BC during holi festival week (pre-Holi (3 days), holi(holi festival days) (2 days) and post-holi (3 days)) period was found to be 41.58, 68.61, 42.96 µg/m3 and 4.97 ± 1.89, 7.61 ± 2.37, 3.20 ± 2.46 µg/m3 respectively. The percentage of BC contributed by BB during pre-Holi, Holi and post-Holi period was 15.05 %, 18.20 % and 17.24 %. On analyzing the concentration of PM2.5, BC, surface ozone (O3), oxides of nitrogen (NOx) during the sampling period, substantial increase in concentration was observed during Holi from pre-Holi period.