Chemistry professor David Cole-Hamilton warns of a shortage of helium, essential for MRI scanners and other applications, due to a lack of recycling. He urges people to avoid helium-filled balloons to prevent supplies running out within a decade. Helium cannot be produced on Earth and is created through the radioactive decay of elements in rocks.
When French astronomer Pierre Janssen looked through his spectroscope on August 18, 1868, he became the first person to observe helium. If dire warnings come true, we could be the last.
David Cole-Hamilton, professor of chemistry at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, is sounding an urgent warning about our dwindling supplies of this colourless, odorless inert gas. He is urging people to go without helium-filled balloons at parties to keep supplies from running out within a decade.
Helium is essential for cooling the superconducting magnets in MRI scanners and is often used in other applications of cryogenics, as a component of breathing gas for deep sea diving and as a lift gas in airships. Although helium is the second most abundant element in the universe, it cannot be produced on Earth. Instead, you have to wait for it to be created through the radioactive decay of elements in rocks that are deep underground.
Helium can, however, be recycled, as Cole-Hamilton hopes. “We’re recycling it from MRI scanners and most of it from deep sea dives, but we’re not recycling it from balloons,” she said. “Helium is very light, so if it gets into the atmosphere it can escape. If we recycle, I think we’ll be fine, but if we gradually put more balloons into the atmosphere, the time will be shorter.”
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Inhaled helium makes a person’s voice much louder because helium is much less dense than normal air.
It would take approximately 4,000 helium-filled balloons to lift an adult off the ground.
Helium turns into a liquid with superfluid qualities at temperatures close to absolute zero.
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