Posted By Jane Blunt
What were you hoping to do with it?
With whom?
With how much of it?
How?

Jane

Posted By Jerry Sanderson
If you are intending to launch a large number of balloons such as for a balloon race(fasten nametag to balloons and see who gets the furthest type event)then you may need to consult the Civil Aviation Authority. The last contact number I had is 020 7453 6589.

Posted By John Donaldson
CAA do have a web page and there is lots of useful info on it

www.caa.co.uk

Posted By Jane Blunt
There is a free leaflet from the British Compressed Gases Association regarding the carriage of gas cylinders in the UK.
http://www.bcga.co.uk/

An activity not to be undertaken lightly by novices. Much preferred to have the gas company deliver the cylinder and take it away again.

Jane

Posted By fats van den raad
Alan
No, it is not painfull, however I would advise not to overdo it as it can have the same effect as holding your breath for a long time.

In response to the question, what exactly you want o do with the ballons obviously has a great effect on the risk assessment.
For example, the following (may be well known to you) is not advisable.From the Darwin site:

(1982, California) Larry Walters of Los Angeles is one of the few to contend for the Darwin Awards and live to tell the tale. "I have fulfilled my 20-year dream," said Walters, a former truck driver for a company that makes TV commercials. "I'm staying on the ground. I've proved the thing works."

Larry's boyhood dream was to fly. But fates conspired to keep him from his dream. He joined the Air Force, but his poor eyesight disqualified him from the job of pilot. After he was discharged from the military, he sat in his backyard watching jets fly overhead.

He hatched his weather balloon scheme while sitting outside in his "extremely comfortable" Sears lawnchair. He purchased 45 weather balloons from an Army-Navy surplus store, tied them to his tethered lawnchair dubbed the Inspiration I, and filled the 4' diameter balloons with helium. Then he strapped himself into his lawnchair with some sandwiches, Miller Lite, and a pellet gun. He figured he would pop a few of the many balloons when it was time to descend.

Larry's plan was to sever the anchor and lazily float up to a height of about 30 feet above his back yard, where he would enjoy a few hours of flight before coming back down. But things didn't work out quite as Larry planned.

When his friends cut the cord anchoring the lawnchair to his Jeep, he did not float lazily up to 30 feet. Instead, he streaked into the LA sky as if shot from a cannon, pulled by the lift of 42 helium balloons holding 33 cubic feet of helium each. He didn't level off at 100 feet, nor did he level off at 1000 feet. After climbing and climbing, he leveled off at 16,000 feet.

At that height he felt he couldn't risk shooting any of the balloons, lest he unbalance the load and really find himself in trouble. So he stayed there, drifting cold and frightened with his beer and sandwiches, for more than 14 hours. He crossed the primary approach corridor of LAX, where Trans World Airlines and Delta Airlines pilots radioed in reports of the strange sight.

Eventually he gathered the nerve to shoot a few balloons, and slowly descended. The hanging tethers tangled and caught in a power line, blacking out a Long Beach neighborhood for 20 minutes. Larry climbed to safety, where he was arrested by waiting members of the LAPD. As he was led away in handcuffs, a reporter dispatched to cover the daring rescue asked him why he had done it. Larry replied nonchalantly, "A man can't just sit around."

The Federal Aviation Administration was not amused. Safety Inspector Neal Savoy said, "We know he broke some part of the Federal Aviation Act, and as soon as we decide which part it is, a charge will be filed."

DarwinAwards.com © 1994 - 2004
Submitted by: Ed Greany, Douglas Walker, Walter Hecht
Reference: UPI, Stabbed with a Wedge of Cheese by Charles Downey

Posted By Zoe Barnett
Just to be pedantic - isn't it Mickey Mouse rather than Donald Duck whom one can impersonate (incartoonate?) with a lungful of helium?

More seriously, I was totally unaware of the physical dangers of doing this. A few months ago I observed a group of teenage lads amusing themselves in my local McDonald's by taking some of the balloons put out in the children's area. They untied the ends and then inhaled the contents before squeaking rude words at passers-by. Although lads of this age are not known for their responsible behaviour, I think they saw it as harmless laugh and didn't know there was a risk.

Should we bear the potential for this kind of behaviour in mind when we offer balloons at events like school fetes? I'm not advocating anything much more than putting up a warning notice - I don't want the Daily Mail headlining "Safety Ban For Kiddie's Balloon Fun" - but nor do I want people's lungs exploding all over the tombola.

What do colleagues think?

Posted By John Webster
Helium is safe enough to breathe - deep divers spend weeks breathing helium/oxygen mixtures. It just does not support life without the oxygen.

Most times when doing a Donald Duck/Minnie Mouse (usually from a partly inflated baloon, not the cylinder) we also draw in some air, and in any case the lungs do not fully deflate between breaths - our exhaled air still contains much of the oxygen we take in - otherwise CPR would not work.

Obviously, if done over several subsequent breaths there is a danger of asphyxiation, but - subject to the risk from pressure noted elsewhere - the odd whiff of helium will not in itself do any harm.

So no need to be killjoys at Fetes just in case a few kids deflate the baloons and breathe in the helium.

PS I once saw an early review of Madonna which described her as sounding like Minnie Mouse on helium!

Posted By N Lusby
The issue with oxygen content is a critical factor in breathing mixtures, and this is amplified in mixtures required for diving, where the crucial factor is the partial pressure of oxygen in the breathing mix. For breathing mixtures used at one atmosphere (which we all breath) – a percentage is commonly used to determine the parameters - as the pressure of the gas will be breathed at a constant pressure of one atmosphere. Normally 19% of oxygen and less will induce hypoxia and 0% will induce anoxia – there are various levels of physical malfunction that develop with the progression of hypoxia and these culminate in unconsciousness. Once the body is in a state of anoxia – you are dead.

Though hypoxia is not a desired condition, it is obviously preferable to anoxia. Recovery can and frequently has occurred from the hypoxic condition depending on its severity and also this severity will determine the potential trauma and long term effects.

A person recovering from an unconscious hypoxic condition commonly emits an involuntary cerebriac cry – this an almost bestial screaming that can in some cases continue for many hours. In diving idiom it is referred to as ‘Helium Howls’ . And this was derived from the usual path of incorrect gas mixing for the depth of dive when using helium as the inert gas component.

In addition the use of pure inert gas was identified as an increased risk due to the nature of pure gas containing no oxygen – that when supplied as a breathing mix incorrectly, had the effect of forcing any oxygen in the body back out through the lungs – called counter gas transport syndrome- and exacerbating and increasing the onset of anoxia.

Due to the efforts of Dr PD James the supply of pure helium to the offshore diving industry ceased and now and since mid 80’s a minimum component of 2% oxygen must be present in all supplied inert diving gases.

It was explained to me sometime ago (By PD James) that within three breathes of a pure gas containing no oxygen, you will be unconscious and depending on your temperature, shortly afterwards you will be anoxic and leave this world.

Good luck with the balloons.

Nigel Lusby MSc MIOSH

Shell Group Diving Safety Advisor