Helium gas hire is a cost-effective and convenient way to inflate your balloons, whether you’re planning a wedding or birthday party. Each cylinder holds enough helium to fill around 100 latex or foil balloons and comes complete with an inflator. Order online to hire a new cylinder, get a helium refill, or dehire your depleted cylinder.

Helium is a volatile commodity. It’s uneconomical to pull it from the air, so most of it is extracted at natural gas refineries, as a byproduct of extracting hydrocarbons. When a natural gas plant shuts down, the supply of helium drops. That’s why a plan to sell the federal government’s dwindling helium reserve has drawn criticism from scientists, who warn that a shutdown would be catastrophic for them. Some labs rely on helium to cool their powerful magnetoencephalography, or MEG, scanners, which take weeks to recool and can cause seizures in some patients.

Up in the Air: Helium Gas Hire for Your Needs

If the MEG scanners at Northwestern University go dark, surgeons will have to operate without detailed brain maps. That’s why the physics community has been lobbying Congress to delay the sale. Other laboratories rely on a reimbursement system that allows them to buy helium from private refiners at subsidized prices. That program is a lifeline for small labs that would otherwise struggle to afford the inflated price of helium on the private market, and it’s not clear how long it will last.