EDITORIAL: Don’t let go of those balloons

On a Sunday in July, airborne objects caused a power outage that left some 2,000 homes and businesses in Milwaukee without electricity. It was one of the more dramatic manifestations of a pollution source that commonly affects birds and other wildlife as well as water quality and human health.

The airborne objects were helium-filled balloons that were released en masse as some sort of celebratory spectacle. We Energies said the metallic coating on the balloons caused electrical shorts when they became entangled in power lines.  

The damage done by the fad of celebrating virtually anything by releasing balloons usually occurs with less fanfare—as in strangled and poisoned seabirds and other creatures, everlasting plastic particles embedded in water used for drinking and recreation and litter on beaches and bodies of water. 

Name an event, occasion or milestone—births, birthdays, engagements, marriages, anniversaries, pregnancies, promotions, retirements, elections and more—and a balloon designed for the occasion, in a special shape, with gaudy colors and a cargo of helium, with strings and ribbons attached, is surely available.

If these balloons were merely presented  to recipients or fastened to door knobs, mail boxes, cars or trees, they would simply be colorful expressions of good wishes. But a part of the balloon celebration experience is letting them go and watching them climb into the sky and disappear.

They inevitably reappear, of course, and land somewhere on Earth transformed from an object of good cheer to a noxious pollutant.

Most of the planet’s surface is water, so lakes, seas and oceans are their frequent landing places, where they float until they eventually wash up on a shore.

A number of dedicated beach walkers pick up the balloons they find on Ozaukee County beaches. The annual total removed from the Port Washington beaches adds up to a substantial haul of litter.

A Town of Belgium resident reported collecting 50 balloons from the beaches near his home in a three-month period this spring and summer.

The Alliance for the Great Lakes annual Adopt-a-Beach shoreline cleanup has found an average of 6,000 balloons or pieces of balloon debris per year on Great Lakes beaches.

Over three years, volunteers for the International Coastal Cleanup removed 29,800 balloons from beaches on the East Coast.

The balloons are a particularly unsightly form of litter, synthetic alien intrusions into places on land and water revered for their natural beauty, but that is the least of their malign impact.

Balloon pieces are often mistaken for food and fatally ingested by seabirds and other avian and aquatic creatures. Birds also become entangled in the strings and ribbons attached to balloons. A study by the journal Scientific Reports concluded that balloon litter is the most deadly of any debris seabirds encounter.

Balloons made of mylar, a form of plastic that is not biodegradable and can last for hundreds of years, contribute to microplastics in water, which scientists say are accumulating in lakes, oceans and waterways and are a health hazard to humans and animals.

Five states have laws regulating the release of balloons. At least 10 other states, including Wisconsin, are considering similar laws. A state senator from Milwaukee, reacting to the balloon-caused power outage there, has introduced a bill making it illegal to release 10 or more balloons.

It’s disappointing that the celebratory balloon phenomenon has reached the point where laws are needed to control it. After all, unlike types of environmentally harmful behavior that are difficult to avoid—fossil fuel use, for example—balloon pollution is easy to give up. Just find another way to say, “Congratulations!”