Feeling deflated: Global helium shortage affecting balloon sales

BOSTON — It's the end of the school year, which means graduation parties, proms - and if you add in birthday parties - that's a lot of reasons to celebrate!

However, if you're looking for balloons to decorate, you might be out of luck.

A serious helium shortage is hitting party stores hard and greatly affecting the customer.

Employees at Itzaparty say it's up in the air whether they'll have any helium to fill all the orders they've been getting.

Last week, customers were only allowed to leave the store with up to 6 balloons - and the store wasn't taking any orders for a week out.

At Party City stores it varies - one store told Boston 25 News it just received another shipment, but customers can only place orders in the store - while another says it's out of helium and not taking any orders.

If you can find a place that will fill balloons, it'll cost you. At Itzaparty, the price for a single latex balloon jumped from $1.29 to &1.99.

Part of the reason for the global shortage is that helium is a finite resource that's recovered from natural gas deposits, so the industry can't just quickly produce more.

Helium, however, isn't limited to just filling up balloons, it can be used in MRI machines, the aerospace industry, scientific weather balloons and scuba diving tanks.

This is the third helium shortage since 2006, but some experts predict this shortage could last a while.

Cox Media Group