The U.S. just sold its helium stockpile. Here’s why the medical world is worried.
On Thursday, the U.S. government sold the Federal Helium Reserve, a massive underground stockpile based in Amarillo, Texas, that supplies up to 30% of the country’s helium.
On Thursday, the U.S. government sold the Federal Helium Reserve, a massive underground stockpile based in Amarillo, Texas, that supplies up to 30% of the country’s helium.
Once the deal is finalized, the buyer — which will likely be the highest bidder, the industrial gas company Messer — will claim some 425 miles of pipelines spanning Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma, plus about 1 billion cubic feet of the only element on Earth cold enough to make an MRI machine work.
Regulatory and logistical issues with the facility threaten a temporary shutdown as it passes from public to private ownership, and hospital supply chain experts worry the sale could have serious consequences for health care down the road — especially when it comes to MRIs.
To be sure, a Federal Helium Reserve shutdown wouldn’t mean that MRIs would suddenly power down across the country, said Soumi Saha, senior vice president of government affairs at Premier Inc., which contracts with helium suppliers on behalf of 4,400 hospitals in the U.S. “But we are stressing about this shortage. From a health care perspective, MRI machines are the No. 1 concern.”
American patients undergo an estimated 40 million MRI scans each year to help diagnose cancer, brain and spinal cord injuries, strokes and heart conditions. The superconductive magnet-powered imaging machines give doctors clear, high-resolution images of areas inside the body they can’t see on X-rays and CT scans. But without liquid helium, the Earth’s coldest element, MRI machines can’t keep their magnets cool enough to generate these images.
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