Helium shortage deflates American celebrations

Helium balloons are part of nearly every American celebration, but a global shortage of the lighter-than-air gas has disrupted many traditions.

One college football team has suspended its traditional release of red balloons, and party planners will have to make do with less, if they get any.

"Due to the global helium shortage, we only allow 20 balloons to be ordered," Litin's Party Value, a party supplier in Minneapolis, Minnesota, warns on its website.

"We've had some customers pretty disappointed that they couldn't get more," Kristi Holmstrom, the chain's general manager, told AFP.

"I've never seen it this bad before," she said, adding that many stores have run out of helium entirely.

Whether it floats at the end of a string or grouped in a bouquet, shaped like a cartoon character, a number, or a Halloween pumpkin, helium balloons are a must.

Between the lost sales and the suspension of the helium rental business, Holmstrom estimates the shortfall to be between $5,000 and $10,000 a month.

The University of Nebraska football team, the Cornhuskers, will do without its traditional release of red balloons, the school color, before each home game this season.

"Acquiring helium is really challenged and it's been hard to get," university athletic director Trev Alberts said in late May.

University officials asked "that the helium we are getting as a university we need to use for medical purposes" at the university's medical center in Omaha," he said.

The inert gas, a byproduct of natural gas production, is liquified to cool magnetic resonance imaging scanners (MRIS), was once deployed on space shuttle missions, and also is used in the manufacturing of semiconductors.

Only a handful of countries...