from what i know about helium; it is lighter than air or the oxygen we breathe so it sits higher in your lungs. Therefore when you exhale it passes through your vocal cords faster which is why your voice is a higher pitch. If you breathe too much Helium in you will become light headed because you aren't getting the oxygen your cells need. An example of a different gas is xenon which is denser and heavier than air. Therefore when you breathe it in it sits at the bottom of your lungs and takes longer to pass through your vocal cords and makes your voice much deeper. It's pretty interesting however xenon is very expensive.
It depends on what you mean. We can breathe helium without any ill effects as long as we get enough oxygen. However, nothing could breathe and use helium as we breathe and use oxygen because helium is inert. Unlike oxygen, which is highly reactive, helium does not participate in chemical reactions, so it could not serve an organism any purpose.
they can breathe it in
helium is less dense than the normal air we breathe, so when you breathe helium out and your vocal chords vibrate, it comes out in a higher pitch tone.
you will talk squeaky
Air you breathe out is denser than helium. This is because exhaled air contains a higher concentration of carbon dioxide and water vapor, which are denser than the gases in the atmosphere. Helium is much lighter than air and tends to rise up.
Helium doesn't cause cancer, so from that perspective it doesn't matter.
No. It is an inert gas. But, if you only breathe helium, you may deprive your brain of oxygen, and that can be fatal.
Not exactly. Helium is an inert gas, and is not toxic.However, you could die from not having oxygen, so if you breathe only helium, yes you could die.
No however the lack of oxygen is deadly. It is unlikely that you will hurt yourself sucking the helium out of balloons, as long as you breathe oxygen in between breaths of helium. There is a small percentage of helium (.0005%) in the earths atmosphere.
No, helium is toxic to your lungs and can kill you if you breathe it long enough, or you could have severe lung damage done to you.
No. Jupiter's atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and helium with no free oxygen.
You breathe helium out pretty quickly when you inhale it. In order for the effect to last the rest of your life, you'd need to breathe enough helium to be able to breathe it out for the rest of your life. Unless "the rest of your life" is measured in seconds (a minute or two at the most), this is impossible. If you asphyxiate yourself with helium, your voice will sound the same way forever (i.e. silent, since you'll be dead). I'm not certain how many balloons that would take, precisely, since it depends on the volume of the balloons.