Reading the Monday, Sept. 26, article “Sending messages” made me question whether balloon releases are harmful to the environment. Does the city have an ordinance regarding how many balloons and what type can be released?

Informer: No.

Several cities and states, citing danger to wildlife, have passed laws that bar or limit balloon releases, but Lake Charles and Louisiana aren’t among them.

Florida law, for example, prohibits people from releasing 10 or more balloons in a 24-hour period. People who violate the statute can be fined $250.

“Balloons released in Florida almost inevitably end up in the Gulf of Mexico or Atlantic Ocean,” reads a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission notice posted online.

“Wildlife, especially sea turtles, mistake balloons for food, and strings attached to balloons can entangle birds and other animals.”

According to a balloon industry study conducted in 1989 — the year Florida enacted its law — latex balloons cause little, if any, problems for wildlife.

“Most helium filled latex rubber balloons that are released burst into tiny pieces about 5 miles above the ground. …,” reads the study, conducted by D.K. Burchette, then a technical adviser for a balloon industry group.

“It would be extremely far fetched to think that one of these small slivers of soft rubber could block the digestive tract of a sea turtle or dolphin.”

Balloons that fail to rise high enough to expand and burst — estimated by the study at 50 out of every 500 — were just as unlikely to cause problems, Burchette said.

At the assumed failure rate, the balloons would come down to Earth in a density of only one per 15 square miles — far too widespread for any animal to “find and eat enough balloon material to do harm under these conditions,” he wrote.

Additionally, Burchette measured how biodegradable latex balloons were under certain conditions — exposure to soil, water, sunlight — and found that they degraded at about the rate of oak leaves.

The study, however, did caution against the use of nonlatex balloons, and it suggested that balloons be released singularly, not in tied bundles, and that any attached strings “be at least as biodegradable as the balloons.”

• Online: www.municode.com; www.theballooncouncil.org; www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz_A2QI9Oes.

Visitors bureau has copies of film

Who do I contact to purchase a DVD of the documentary “All Over But to Cry”?

Copies of the film, produced by New Orleans-based Fresh Media, are available for $20 at the Southwest Louisiana Convention & Visitors Bureau on Lakeshore Drive.

The film, which tells the stories of survivors of Hurricane Audrey, took two years to produce. It won the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities’ 2010 Humanities Documentary Film of the Year award.

• Online: http://getfreshmedia.com; www.visitlakecharles.com.

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The Informer answers questions from readers each Sunday, Monday and Wednesday. It is researched and written by Andrew Perzo, an American Press staff writer. To ask a question, call 494-4098, press 5 and leave voice mail, or email informer@americanpress.com.