At some point or another in our lives, most of us have probably inhaled the helium out of a balloon so we could hear ourselves speaking with a funny voice. As it turns out, that may be more dangerous than most of us realize.
In New Zealand, a family is mourning after a young mother of two children died from asphyxiation after inhaling helium. It happened during the setup of her daughter’s birthday party and she was urged to suck gas directly from the canister rather than from a balloon.
Little did they know, that it was going to end up costing the young mother her life. The family is now fighting to have clear labels on the canister because they feel that she would have avoided inhaling the helium if she had been warned adequately.
The 20-year-old mother, Faith Waterman Batistich lived in the town of Te Puke in New Zealand and was preparing for her daughter’s first birthday party in September 2022. There was a helium canister being used to fill the birthday balloons and people started inhaling helium from the balloons to make their voices sound funny. It’s a fairly common practice.
According to her twin, Eden Waterman: “Everyone jumped on the bandwagon like, ‘oh, that’s so funny'” That is when somebody suggested that she should inhale helium from the container directly because it seemed harmless.
They had to convince her to breathe the helium, but while she was doing it, somebody turned up the gas.
Eden said: “It went too fast and kind of shot her in the back of the neck. Her last words were literally, ‘Oh s—’ and she dropped. I thought she was putting it on at the start.”
They said that she ‘went blue’ right away and her mother and cousin started doing CPR on the mother of toddlers immediately. They continued with CPR for 45 minutes and paramedics worked for another 20 minutes but she was not able to be revived.
Helium is odorless and colorless and when you inhale it, it displaces the oxygen in the lungs. This results in low blood oxygen, a condition known as hypoxia. It could result in death as it causes damage to the body.
Her mother said: “It wouldn’t matter whether she was even in a hospital environment when it happened, there’s no coming back from it.”
Her twin added that she didn’t suffer and was ‘gone instantly’.
Life has changed without Faith with them. They said that she was a ‘bright and bubbly’ individual and they can’t even be around helium now that she died because of what happened.
You can purchase helium canisters in stores in New Zealand. The family is looking for restrictions to be placed on helium sales so others can be saved from this issue.
According to coroner Louella Dunn: “This is a known party pleaser. Many people are, however, unaware of the potential threats of inhaling helium in such a situation. What may seem like harmless fun is potentially life-threatening.
“The canister’s warnings are in very small print. The warning relevant to dangers of inhalation is the last warning of five other listed warnings.”
Because of the small print, she feels that consumers would not be aware ‘of the potential risk of inhaling helium from a pressurized canister.’
She is making the following recommendations, “I recommend that the warning should be in bold print at the top of the canister stating: ‘Do not inhale — risk of serious personal injury or death’.”