ROCHESTER, N.Y. — It’s a sight unfortunately many of us know all too well: gathering in moments of grief and letting their spirits fly high through helium balloons.

However, these visual tributes are banned across 12 different states, and New York could be next in line.

“The visual of a balloon release is beautiful,” Airigami artistic director Kelly Cheatle said. “I understand the desire to do that. But the time to have that conversation is not in the middle of a tragedy. The time to have that conversation is hopefully now, when things are hopefully good.”

Kelly Cheatle has been specializing in balloon making for years.

“We do installations, illustrations, live action animation sometimes, entirely out of balloons,” Cheatle said. “My husband started this decades ago. And I came along for the ride a few years back. Together, we combined his skills and my skills with design and illustration, and we’ve been tying all sorts of knots ever since. Balloons are a great material for people to experiment with for art, because they’re lightweight, they’re inexpensive, and they don’t take up a lot of room when they’re not inflated. We’ve been the world’s largest Lego minifigure made entirely out of balloons in London. We built a giant robot in Japan. We’ve come up with a bunch of projects that can be built by community.”

Understanding both the skills it takes to handle these materials and their environmental impacts.

“This is made out of plastic,” Cheatle said. “It’s a metalized nylon, if you want to be fancy. When this gets released, this doesn’t break down. If you have a latex balloon, but if you have a plastic ribbon on it, you’re now letting a plastic ribbon go and fly and end up in the tree or in a field.”

“We’ve had situations where, not we personally, but there have been situations where a balloon, a helium-filled balloon with a plastic ribbon on it, you know, ended up in a field with livestock and it ends up getting swallowed by the animal,” she added. “Airigami does not do balloon releases because we don’t believe that we should be littering. It’s a beautiful visual for sure, and I honor that. 

“There are people who are having a moment in their lives of tragedy or a loss, and they want to honor their loved one. So we have to be mindful of how we celebrate and how we honor, to not cause harm… I don’t want anybody doing a balloon release, but definitely don’t do a balloon release with a plastic ribbon. And don’t do a balloon release with a foil balloon.”

But the concern goes beyond just being eco-friendly; it’s about being safe too. 

“Mylar balloons are metallic and by nature, if they come in tangled with a power line or some electricity equipment, they could cause outages,” National Grid spokesperson David Bertola said. “They could damage the equipment, and it could cause a safety issue for our ability to reliably deliver electricity to our 540,000-plus customers in Western New York if a balloon were to become entangled in those wires.”

Although Bertola says it’s not a common occurrence, he remembers the impacts these instances can have.

“There were some balloons that got entangled shortly after Valentine’s Day,” Bertola said. “But it impacted 6,400 customers for about a two-and-a-half-hour period. But one time in around 10 years is a pretty good batting average for us. We come to work every day making sure that you’re able to turn that light on. We’re able to charge our phones. We’re able to live our lives. There’s some security that comes with electricity, right? So if you have a mylar balloon or you’re having an event outside, make sure that they’re weighed down. Make sure that when you’re done with your balloons, you puncture them and get all the helium out of them so that they don’t float away into our lines and/or just keep them inside. If you do see a balloon or anything entangled in a power line, don’t ever try to get it out by yourself. Always give us a call.”

Hoping not to burst anyone’s balloon bubble, Cheatle hopes they can find alternative ways to symbolize these moments of mourning.

“Creatively together to figure out, how do we honor people who have passed in a way that is symbolic and beautiful but does not cause harm,” Cheatle said. “Things like bubbles. Something that we’ve done before in the past is we’ve done tethered releases where we’ll take a large, like three-foot balloon and we’ll have people sign messages on it, and then we will attach a line to it, but we don’t let go of that line. And so, the balloon kind of hangs out over the surface of the ceremony. And then afterwards we bring it back down, and we slowly let out the air. And what’s interesting is on the latex balloons, the messages shrink down small, so it’s an interesting option. There are ways that we can have less of a footprint with our celebrations, we just have to find creative outlets and alternatives.”

Twelve states have balloon release laws in place. New York could be added to that list. A Senate bill banning the release of balloons that cause harm to wildlife and the environment is currently in committee. Spectrum News 1 reached out to the co-sponsors of the bill, but they declined to comment at this time.