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Inhaling helium can be dangerous if done to excess, since helium is a simple asphyxiant and so displaces oxygen needed for normal respiration. [28] [186] Fatalities have been recorded, including a youth who suffocated in Vancouver in 2003 and two adults who suffocated in South Florida in 2006.
Large-scale natural release of gas, such as during the Lake Nyos disaster in which volcanically-released carbon dioxide killed 1,800 people. [6] Release of helium boiled off by the energy released in a magnet quench such as the Large Hadron Collider or a magnetic resonance imaging machine. Climbing inside an inflatable balloon filled with ...
The OSHA definition is arguably broad enough to include oxygen-deficient circumstances in the absence of "airborne contaminants", as well as many other chemical, thermal, or pneumatic hazards to life or health (e.g., pure helium, super-cooled or super-heated air, hyperbaric or hypo-baric or submerged chambers, etc.).
A global helium shortage has doctors worried about one of the natural gas’s most essential, and perhaps unexpected, uses: MRIs.. Strange as it sounds, the lighter-than-air element that gives ...
Helium also has a very low boiling point (-268.9°C or -452°F), allowing it to remain a gas even in super-cold environments, an important feature because many rocket fuels are stored in that ...
However, helium is not narcotic, and a usable mixture may be blended either by completely replacing nitrogen with helium (the resulting mix is called heliox), or by replacing part of the nitrogen with helium, producing a trimix. [83] Pulmonary oxygen toxicity is an entirely avoidable event while diving.
Breathing gas mixtures such as trimix and heliox include helium, which can also cause decompression sickness. Helium both enters and leaves the body faster than nitrogen, so different decompression schedules are required, but, since helium does not cause narcosis, it is preferred over nitrogen in gas mixtures for deep diving. [59]
The Federal Helium Reserve was supposed to be sold off in 2021. Scientists hope it will remain in government hands. ... makes people sound like chipmunks. But liquid helium is liquid gold to a ...