Helium Gas & Safety
HELIUM INHALATION
IT'S NO LAUGHING MATTER
Have you ever been to a party where someone has inhaled helium
to sound like Donald Duck? If so they have probably put their life at risk.
Evidence has proven that the inhalation of helium can be
fatal, yet thousands of partygoers continue to inhale helium thinking it to be
incredibly funny rather than life threatening. The inhalation of helium cuts
off a person’s supply of oxygen and can cause dizziness, unconsciousness and
ultimately death!
Doctors are concerned about the health risk associated with
people inhaling helium. This is a
particular problem when people are inebriated and their system is already
contending with an outside influence.
According to a consultant occupational health physician “
People have not yet realised the extreme danger associated with helium
inhalation. If the concentration of
oxygen is decreased below 18% within the human body, symptoms and signs of
asphyxia can occur. Helium gas can totally displace the available oxygen and if
this is maintained for even a few seconds, asphyxia and death can and will
occur.
In 1989 fifteen-year-old Michelle Moreno from Texas died
from helium inhalation at a friends party. Her death caused major headlines in
the United States regarding the dangers of helium inhalation. In Australia,
Kristi Brash from Victoria had a near death experience when she appeared to
freeze and turn blue after inhaling the entire contents of a balloon. Kristi
fell motionless to the floor but luckily regained consciousness after a few
minutes Kristi was rushed to hospital and after examination she appeared to be
fine although any long-term effects of the inhalation are yet to be determined.
Comedy television and radio programmes often us helium as a
device to get laughs – only recently I have witnessed Jonathon Ross on his
Friday night show doing just that. This
portrays helium inhalation as a fun, safe practice when, in effect, it is
deadly. Public figures are influential in the minds of the public and they need
to realise that they could either die from helium use or be indirectly
responsible for the death of another.
Unfortunately with people continuing to ignore the dangers
of this potentially lethal practice, it is a difficult task to educate the
public that helium inhalation is no laughing matter!
|
Helium General Information
|
Categories
- Class: Inert Gases
- Period: 1
- IUPAC group: 18
- Traditional: 0
|
History
- Discovered in: 1868 by Janssen
- Origin of name: Greek: helios, (the sun)
- Historical or alternate name:
|
Common natural occurrences
Atmosphere, 1 part in 200,000; radioactive minerals as a decay product
|
Description
Colorless, odorless gas; nonreactive chemically.
|
Abundances
- Atmosphere: 5.2 ppm
- Primitive mantle: ~0.0 ppm
- Sea water: 7.2e-6 ppm
- Metallic meteorite: 56000.0 ppm
- Continental crust: 0.008 ppm
- Solar photosphere: 10.8 log of abundance
- Oceanic crust: ~0.0 ppm
- Solar system: 2.180E+9 relative to Si=1.0e6
|
Hazards and Tolerances
Hazards
Inert nonflammable gas. Asphyxiant..
Human daily limits
|
Helium Physical Properties |
Transitional Data
- State: Gas
- Density: 0.1785 g/L
|
Molar enthalpy
- Atomization: 0.0 kJ mol-1
- Fusion: 0.021 kJ mol-1
- Vaporization: 0.082 kJ mol-1
|
Transition points
- Melting point: 0.95 K
- Boiling point: 4.22 K
- Critical temperature: 5.19 K
|
Molar properties
- Atomic weight: 4.002602 g/mole
- Molar volume: 19.61 cm3 mol-1
|
Crystal structure sequence
body-centered-cubic -> hexagonal-close-packed -> face-centered-cubic with increasing pressure
|
Thermodynamics
- State: gas
- Enthalpy 0
- Gibbs function 0
- Entropy 126.150
- Heat Capacity 20.786
|
Miscellaneous physical
- Electrical resistivity: µ-ohms/cm
- Debye temperature: K
- Thermal conductivity: 0.155 W / m / K
- Coefficient of linear expansion: Coef. per K
- Mass magnetic susceptibility: -5.9e-9
- X-ray diffraction mass absorption coefficients:
- CuK: 0.383 (µ/p)/cm2 g-1
- MoK: 0.207 (µ/p)/cm2 g-1
|
Helium Chemical Properties |
Chemical basics:
- Oxidation states: 0
- Molecular wt: 4.002602 g/mole
|
Radii
- Covalent: pm
- Atomic: 128 pm
- Van der Waals: 122 pm
|
Ions:
|
Covalent bonds
|
Effective nuclear charge
- Slater: 1.70
- Clementi: 1.69
- Froese-Fischer: 1.62
|
Electronegativity
|
Standard reactions
oxidation
|
reduction
|
potential
|
|
Helium Nuclear Properties |
| Isotopes |
| Number of isotopes:
|
Isotope range:
|
Nuclide 3
- % Occ.:Natural 0.000138%
- Mossbauer NRA:
- Nuclear spin/Quantum no.: 1/2
- Radioisotopes:
- Half-life:
- Decay mode:
- Source:
- Notes
|
Nuclide 4
- % Occ.:Natural 99.999862%
- Mossbauer NRA:
- Nuclear spin/Quantum no.:
- Radioisotopes:
- Half-life:
- Decay mode:
- Source:
- Notes
|
Thermal neutron capture
- Isotope Cross-section 0.007 barns
|
| Nuclear magnetic resonance |
|
Nuclide: 3
- Absolute sensitivity: 5.75e-7 1H=1.0
- Relative sensitivity: 0.44 1H=1.0
- Receptivity: 0.00326 13C=1.0
- Magnetogyric ratio: -20.378e7 rad / T / s
- Quadropole moment: m2
- Frequency: 76.178 MHz
- Reference:
|
|
Helium Energy Properties |
Electrons
- Ground state electron configuration: 1s2
- Electron affinity: -21 kJ mol-1
- Filling orbitals:
|
Ionization energies
|
Ionization level
He -> He+ |
Ionization potential
2372.3 |
|
Atomic energy levels
|
|
