"Teen suffers rare death inhaling helium" by Jeff Barnard | Associated Press, February 23, 2012
EAGLE POINT, Ore. - Last weekend, Ashley Long, 14, told her parents she was going to a slumber party. But instead of spending the night watching videos and eating popcorn two blocks away, she piled into a car with a bunch of friends and rode to a condo in the nearby town of Medford, where police say one friend’s older sister was throwing a party with booze and marijuana.
After some teens allegedly drank on the drive and downed more drinks in the condo, it came time for Ashley to take her turn on a tank of helium that everyone else was inhaling to make their voices sound funny.
“That helium tank got going around,’’ said Ashley’s stepfather, Justin Earp, who said he learned what happened from talking to Ashley’s friends at the party. “It got to my daughter. My daughter didn’t want to do it. It was peer pressure. They put a mask up to her face. They said it would be OK. ‘It’s not gonna hurt you. It’ll just make you laugh and talk funny.’ ’’
Instead, she passed out and later died at a hospital, because of an obstruction in a blood vessel caused by inhaling helium from a pressurized tank.
“It blew her lungs out,’’ Earp said. “It exploded them. It created air pockets in her veins. Then it went up into her brain and blew it up.’’
It is a common party trick to suck in helium to give the voice a cartoon character sound.
But the death exposes the rare but real dangers of inhaling helium, especially from a pressurized tank. The gas is commonly seen in suicide kits - mail-order hoods, sold out of Oregon and elsewhere, that can be attached to a helium tank by people who want to kill themselves.
Dr. Mark Morocco, associate professor of emergency medicine at the Ronald Reagan Medical Center in Los Angeles, said what happens is similar to when a scuba diver surfaces too quickly.
Police have arrested Katherine McAloon, 27, who lived in the condo, on charges of providing alcohol and marijuana to minors.
She wouldn't have to worry in Massachusetts. Probably just get probation.
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