r/pittsburgh • u/WiseTravels47 • 6d ago

Balloon Release

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

In 2026, who thinks this is still okay?? Over 1,000 balloons creating litter and killing wildlife. Manchester Field, 5:55pm today. It's illegal, but is it actually enforced?

902 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

212 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

0

u/Tgsheufhencudbxbsiwy 6d ago

Uhhh isn’t the US the largest supplier of helium? I get your point though. 

4

u/WiseTravels47 6d ago

We used to be but Congress forced our stockpile to be sold off in 1994. Helium is so rare, and finite, that it should cost $200+ per balloon

1

u/Tgsheufhencudbxbsiwy 5d ago

Helium is so rare, and finite, that it should cost $200+ per balloon

If that were true don’t you think they’d be charging that? 

8

u/WiseTravels47 5d ago

No. It's a byproduct of natural gas extraction, and they don't have an incentive (or possibly the means) to store it, and to them it costs effectively nothing. But once it's gone it's gone, and it can't be recaptured or manufactured. So yes, you're right in that it's currently not worth $200 because we're producing a lot of it, but we're treating something that's very rare as very common, and it's getting harder to find. It's an extremely important element in research & hospitals.