Helium

Recently we had a birthday party for our 2 year old.  As with many parties for kids we had Helium-filled balloons.  But part of me feels like this was a horrible waste of a useful resource.  I know, that sounds a little odd to regret buying Helium-filled balloons, but let me explain.

As anyone who's taken chemistry knows, there are only two gases lighter than the average density of air; Hydrogen and Helium.  Because Hydrogen is highly inflammable (think Hindenburg), balloons and dirigibles are now filled with Helium.  But people don't realize Helium is a precious commodity that, depending on how you look at it, is NOT renewable.  When Helium is present in the atmosphere, because it is lighter than air, it rises.  It continually rises higher and higher in the atmosphere until eventually it bleeds off into space.  The same is true of Hydrogen, but Helium (unlike Hydrogen) is chemically inert so it can't react with anything making it heavier and thus keeping it in the atmosphere.  What this means is once Helium becomes airborn, it's only a matter of time until it's gone.  Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe, but it's extremely rare on Earth.  Only 5 parts per million of the atmosphere is Helium, and most of that is in the extreme upper atmosphere where we currently don't have the ability to extract it.

You might be asking yourself, if Helium is so rare in the atmosphere how or where does the Helium we use come from?  It may shock you to learn Helium is extracted from the ground, in the exact same way as natural gas.  There is Helium trapped in layers of rocks underground which is extracted and separated from other gases.  I believe up to 10% of raw natural gas underground is Helium.  If you're wondering how the Helium got in the ground in the first place, it turns out Helium is the by product of radioactive decay of several large elements such as Uranium.  That's why, to some degree, Helium could be considered a "renewable" resource because even though we take Helium out of the ground, there's always elements decaying creating more Helium.  That said, I highly suspect man is extracting Helium and using Helium at a greater rate than it's being created.  And that's why I feel like the Helium-filled balloons were such a waste.  We used Helium strictly for decoration when Helium has so many other uses such as cryogenics, dirigibles, inert gas environments, etc.  So in the future if I need MRI medical scan but the MRI machine isn't operational because there is no Helium to cool the super-conductive magnets, I'm sure going to wish I didn't waste the Helium on balloons.