Helium party and helium birthday balloons - why they should be banned - and why you should never buy them.

Also - Kate Middleton's mother (Carole Goldsmith now Carole Middleton) - a woman who made part of her multimillion pound fortune by selling helium party balloons.

And - as an aside - the proposed use of helium gas to stun pigs prior to slaughter.

Of all the Earth's irreplaceable resources, helium gas is perhaps one of the most precious - once reserves are depleted they can never be replenished. And you can do useful things with liquid helium that you cannot do in any other way.

A feature of FolkWeek in Sidmouth is a myriad of plastic and other 'tat' being sold along the seafront,
and around the market square, by itinerant traders and others.

Helium is the second lightest gas - only hydrogen is less dense.

The reserves of helium that are available to mankind are essentially fixed - they consist of the gas that has been formed inside the Earth over its lifetime - billions of years. Although radioactive decay is continuing to produce more helium, the amount that will be produced during the time that mankind inhabits the Earth - maybe another 500 or 5000 years (if we are lucky!) - are utterly trivial.

Significant quantities of helium can only be produced inside a star or by radioactive decay, including deep inside the Earth.

Once helium is released into Earth's atmosphere it escapes gravity and is lost forever. Heavier (more dense) gases, notably oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, etc are retained by Earth's gravity. Trace quantities of the other 'noble' gases are present in our atmosphere.

During my university days as a research scientist, I used liquid helium to produced temperatures close to absolute zero (the coldest temperature that can ever be attained).

The reasons why helium is so precious to mankind, and why helium filled party and birthday balloons should be banned, were published in a letter in my local newspaper, timed to coincide with FolkWeek in 2023.

Helium filled birthday balloons are a year-round example of feckless stupidity. There have been other wasteful uses of helium (flushing out the fuel tanks of ICBMs for example) but party balloons are one of the most wasteful of current 'non-essential' uses.

Sir (letter in Sidmouth Herald August 2023)

DO NOT BUY HELIUM-FILLED BALLOONS!

As Folk Week is upon us, could I suggest that people do not purchase helium filled balloons, either from street sellers or from town stores.

Helium is an irreplaceable resource, and toy balloons are a major non-essential use. Not only is the gas wasted (it cannot be recovered from the atmosphere) but the balloons eventually come down and the metallised foil poses a risk to wildlife.

Liquid helium is required to cool the superconducting magnets that are essential in most NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) scanners (nowadays called MRI scanners). These machines produce the medical images that we now take for granted - and especially brain scans.

Helium can only be produced in stars and within planets via radioactive decay - but humankind only has access to a finite amount of the gas, typically from gas and oil wells, and whilst most is unfortunately wasted at source, a recent international conference outlined that we may only have 50 years left before supplies start to run out. Toy helium balloons are sold for typically Ł1 to Ł5. Scientists have suggested that the true resource value is more like Ł100. If helium is lost in an MRI scanner accident, even today it can cost Ł30,000 to replace it.

As a research scientist, I used liquid nitrogen and liquid helium to obtain temperatures close to absolute zero, in order to utilise superconducting magnets. One of the professors in the same research group won a Nobel Prize for his pioneering work on NMR. It is only in the last 30 years that hospital patients have been able to benefit.

Currently, people waste just about everything, from energy to food and clothes. Everything has a consequence, but the feckless waste of helium seems to be particularly short-sighted. Ideally, the manufacture and sale of these balloons should be stopped - as indeed should that of so many other unnecessary 'throw-away' consumer products.

Dr Stephen J Wozniak
SIDMOUTH

In 2024, needless to say, these balloons were still on sale. I overheard the seller bemoaning the fact that whereas he used to buy a cylinder of helium for Ł90, the price had increased to Ł450. He (and local punters who were commiserating with his plight) seemed to be collectively so stupid that they failed to realise that maybe the price had been increased for a good reason - to try and prevent waste.

The magnetic fields produced by superconducting magnets are extreme - but quite safe if you do as you are told. This man didn't live to tell the tale after his scan.

Another unusual death was that of a 13 year old girl who died from drinking Costa hot chocolate - this article shows her with helium filled 13th birthday balloons. So there is a double tragedy. If judged by Ultimate Consequence (a method of analysis) waste of the helium is the more important issue. There are billions of children, thousands die every week from malnutrition, or in war, and more can easily be produced. But you cannot replace helium that has been lost to the atmosphere.

Gassing pigs - which gas to use to stun pigs prior to slaughter?

Quite recently another arguably wasteful use of helium has been suggested - to help to kill pigs by suffocating them! This would be as a possibly more humane replacement for carbon dioxide. This is currently used (and released into the atmosphere once the pigs have suffered what appears to be a period of torture before they become unconscious).

A youtube video of the gassing process is available. The method is apparently used on 88% of pigs in the UK. Pigs are actually quite intelligent.

As a digression from helium, if you are interested in animal welfare, China's recently constructed 26-storey factory farm for pigs is highly mechanised, but I don't have details of the methods of slaughter.

The aim is to kill 1.2 million pigs each year, which is about one every 30 seconds.

Kate Middleton's mother - history - wealth - and Party Pieces.

add scans from newspaper article, Times magazine, and photos.

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