Radio duo Hamish and Andy branded 'irresponsible' after helium balloon stunt just days after an 8-year-old girl died from a helium balloon.

My eight-year-old son performed this really funny party trick the other day. I don’t know where he heard about it.

It could have been on TV or YouTube, perhaps I or his dad told him about it. Maybe he heard it on radio while in the car on the way to school.

We all laughed as he did it and so he did it again and again and again.

I’ve now found out it could have killed him.

That it has caused numerous deaths, that an eight-year-old girl died from it just the other day.

But I never knew, I never for a second knew that inhaling helium from a balloon could be lethal.

The issue has hit the spotlight this week after radio duo Hamish and Andy, who host the drive time show on the Today Network, performed a poorly timed stunt where they sucked in helium in order to change their voices and made a prank phone call pretending to be the pilots of a blimp that was leaking helium into the cockpit, and asked for permission to land on an oval.

It probably would have been funny had an eight-year-old girl not died just days before from helium.

The young girl, Jaina McGloghlon from Oregon in the US had a giant number three balloon from her father's birthday party in her room.

When her father went to check on her he found her in bed, took the covers off, and found her with the balloon on her head. He cut off the balloon and performed CPR, but even after emergency workers tried to resuscitate her for an hour Jaina could not be revived.

Local officials say she tried to suck helium out of the balloon and suffocated, the death was ruled an accident reports Fox Now 2.

Listeners of Hamish and Andy reprimanded the duo for their stunt, saying they were irresponsible and insensitive in light of the young girl's death.

"Come on Hamish & Andy," wrote one listener on Facebook "you can do better than this. Please don't let more kids see this and think "hey Hamish & Andy did it, I'm going to do it too".

Another "Helium inhalation isn't funny. It's a cheap gag & it's extremely dangerous. A young girl died from it recently. Please don't promote this behaviour, kids will start copying. Surely as media personalities you have a duty of care to your audience."

Others defended their actions saying that they were just trying to be funny.

"Please dont promote eating lots of marshmallows either" wrote a Facebook user "Many children have died from it, also some kids got hit by cars, please dont drive your cars either, or promote driving, and some kids have died whilst sleeping, please dont use sleeping gags, also I think some kids have died whilst being at parties from choking on candles in the cake - oh man be careful guys!"

While the posters are right - it it is dangerous, it’s also important to remember that it is rare that children die from a simple helium balloon.

A 2011 study in the Journal of Forensic Sciences found that 79 Australians died from inhaling the gas between July 2005 and December 2009. It’s obviously 79 too many but in many cases the helium was sucked straight out of a large gas canister, or there was some element of suffocation involved.

(In 2011 the death of a 14-year-old Irish teenager from helium made headlines. In this teenager’s case she had inserted her head inside a helium balloon.)

Mumbrella made the link to the Hamish and Andy stunt and a similar one on a breakfast TV show where broadcaster Dr Karl Kruszelnicki nearly died.

Dr Karl told the BBC this week " I nearly killed myself on air live, imbibing helium. I blew all the air out of my lungs and brought in a deep lungful of helium, blew out all the air again and sucked in some more helium.

“I timed it really accurately. I did all this in the ten seconds before the camera came onto me on live breakfast television in Australia on a commercial channel, and then I spoke in that funny high voice for about 20 seconds.

“As the camera moved off me, I began to feel a little bit odd. I began to lose my vision. It narrowed down to a single tunnel. I had no control and began to fall to the floor in the TV studio, while I was live" he said.

“I managed to break my fall but made a noise. One of the camera operators turned around and put his fingers to his lips and went ‘shh… don’t make a noise in the studio’.

“I’m lying there on the floor, thinking ‘I’m dying’. "said Dr Karl "A small part of me knew I was dying. I began to get weaker and weaker. As I was passing out, it came to me: ‘I’m dying because I’m not breathing.'”

His realisation prompted him to gasp for breath and he recovered.

The helium gas is dangerous as when inhaled it displaces the air in the lungs in the same way water does when you drown and can quickly cause loss of consciousness and you can stop breathing and may die.

The BBC warns that should anyone experience ill effects from inhaling helium, the advice is to get the person to breathe in fresh air immediately.

If symptoms persist oxygen may need to be administered, so get medical help urgently. They write that young children should not be left unsupervised with any balloons and in particular, helium balloons as children have been known to inhale parts of the balloon, which can then block the airways.