How dangerous are the beautiful balloons sold on the street? An experiment will tell you!

During the Spring Festival, you can always see some small vendors selling balloons on the street, moving among the crowd, holding all kinds of colorful and large-sized balloons in their hands, attracting the attention of many children.

This type of balloon is usually a hydrogen balloon, but hydrogen is a flammable and explosive gas and will explode when it encounters a fire source. At this time, the balloon is likely to become a "handheld bomb."

How big is the risk of hydrogen balloon explosion? Let's take a look at the dangers behind these beautiful balloons through firefighters' experiments!

On New Year's Eve some time ago, at the stroke of 12 o'clock, people on the streets of Wuhan released a large number of hydrogen balloons, which collided with telephone poles and caused the hydrogen balloons to explode.

The New Year's Eve event, which was full of ritual, became a hot topic because of the explosion of a hydrogen balloon. I believe many people have seen this news. But in fact, the explosion of hydrogen balloons has appeared in the news countless times.

Image source: Video screenshot

Hydrogen is an extremely flammable and explosive gas. The reason why it is used by merchants to inflate balloons is that hydrogen is very light and filling balloons can make them float easily in the air. This kind of balloon is much more playable and ornamental than balloons filled with ordinary air. Therefore, in the market, especially in some schools, amusement parks, children's hospitals, parks and other places where there are many children, there will be vendors selling this kind of balloons.

In fact, relevant national standards stipulate that toxic and harmful gases such as hydrogen cannot be filled into balloon toys.

Another gas that can make balloons float in the air is helium. Helium is a very stable gas, not as flammable and explosive as hydrogen, and can be filled into balloons. However, the cost of helium is much more expensive than hydrogen, so many vendors would rather take the risk of using hydrogen than using helium, which costs much more.

So what is the situation in the market? How many vendors still use hydrogen? Are hydrogen balloons really extremely flammable and explosive? How big is the risk of explosion? We can't just talk, we can do experiments to prove it

We visited several places where children were more common and purchased a batch of floating balloons from vendors.

During the purchase process, we asked the sellers. Some sellers said that the balloons were filled with safe helium, while some vendors did not specify what gas was filled, but just said that it would not explode.

The balloons we purchased ranged in price, from a dozen yuan to several dozen yuan. Next, we went to the fire station and completed an experiment with the help of firefighters to see if the balloons would explode.

Image source: Video screenshot

The moment the balloon came into contact with the fire source, it exploded with a bang and continued to burn in the air, with the temperature instantly reaching over 300 degrees.

We ignited balloons of different prices and all of them exploded, which showed that these balloons were filled with hydrogen and not a single helium balloon.

The moment a hydrogen balloon explodes, it has a very strong impact. The temperature it generates is also very high. We can feel the temperature when we wear protective gloves. The drippings from the burning balloon skin are very sticky. If they touch our skin, they will cause burns.

We upgraded the experiment, prepared a human head model, put on a wig, and ignited a hydrogen balloon in front of the model. The hydrogen balloon attached to the hair at the moment of explosion, causing large-scale burns on the hair. If a real person encounters this kind of thing, the consequences will be disastrous, so everyone must pay attention!

Image source: Video screenshot

The fire department hereby calls on everyone to be cautious when purchasing floating balloons. When purchasing and playing with them:

First, do not approach fire;

Second, do not bring it into a confined space;

The third parent must provide good supervision;

Through experiments, it can be found that most of the floating balloons on the market now are probably based on low-cost hydrogen, which is extremely flammable and explosive. It can be said that it will explode and burn immediately when encountering open flames.

Many tragedies have happened, and I have to remind everyone again here, especially moms and dads, grandparents, and grandparents, never buy floating balloons for your children casually, because you can't be sure what kind of gas is filled in them.

We also bought helium and balloons online and did an experiment with the helium-filled balloons. They would not burn immediately or explode when exposed to open flames, making them much safer.

In fact, it is not just hydrogen balloons. We have also done other small experiments in the fire department. There are many examples of flammable and explosive things in life: jet streamers will burn when they encounter open flames, jet artificial snow will also burn when it encounters open flames, and the small sun that is essential in winter will also burn if it is accidentally covered with flammable materials.

During the Spring Festival, various safety accidents are prone to occur frequently. The fire department is here to remind everyone to take good safety precautions and have a safe, healthy and happy New Year! Safety precautions depend on everyone!

This video is a work supported by Science Popularization China-Starry Sky Project

Produced by: Science Popularization Department of China Association for Science and Technology

Producer｜China Science and Technology Press Co., Ltd., Beijing Zhongke Xinghe Culture Media Co., Ltd.

Creative team丨Zhejiang Metropolis Express Science Communication Center·Curiosity Lab

Audit Expert | Zhou Xiaoliang, Senior Engineer of Physics Laboratory, Beijing Jiaotong University