Oaxaca, Oax.- A few days before the festivity of the Three Wise Men, the Ministry of the Environment urges the population not to use balloons to send their letters, since they pollute the environment.

On January 6, or even days before this date, the Three Wise Men get ready to take toys and other things to wherever the children indicate in the letters they write to them with great joy.

Previously, every January 5, the children left these letters inside their shoes and, the next morning, they found toys, clothes, backpacks or whatever they had asked for next to the bed or under the Christmas tree.

However, in many parts of the world, and also in Mexico, the anti-ecological custom of sending those letters hooked to balloons that are released with strings and other plastics that will also end up polluting the environment has been adopted for about a decade so that, through the wind, reach the wise men. A fun action, but one that causes serious damage to the fauna.

An article in the journal Nature, quoted by the ecocosas.com portal, indicates that seabirds are 32 times more likely to die from ingesting a balloon than from ingesting other types of hard plastics such as Lego pieces, or the controversial straws. It explains that although balloons account for only 2% of all plastics ingested by seabirds, they are responsible for 42% of plastic-related deaths.

Balloons greatly harm the environment and biodiversity because they are made of polyurethane, synthetic polymers such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET), microfoil or polyamide, or latex. But not only for that, but also because they contain chemicals.

Lighter, polyamide, microfoil, mylar or metallic balloons, which come in bright colors and shapes, can be inflated with air, but more commonly they are inflated with helium, for which they have a valve. Thus, they can travel up to 3,000 kilometers in a day, which is why they can cross oceans or continents, rise over mountains and get trapped in the high foliage of jungle or forest trees.

The colors and properties that these materials bring together are truly attractive and it makes us euphoric to see them rise and move carried by the wind until they are lost in infinity. It is estimated that they can be raised up to 10 kilometers, but what happens next? Do they just disappear like that? Are they magically lost in the sky?

Different scholars of this activity have found what happens to the balloons before and after they are launched into the air:

– The color, texture, resistance and durability that manufacturers give to polyurethane, PET or latex balloons or other materials, are provided by chemical products such as ammonia, thiuram and zinc oxide.

-A polyurethane balloon takes 450 years to degrade and a latex balloon takes three to five months, or years if they fall into water, but as they contain chemicals they damage soil or water, and a metallic balloon will be inflated longer and will take longer to result in more time to degrade.

– The balloons fall up to thousands of kilometers away afterward and impact ecosystems and biodiversity, mainly fauna. In addition, these devices can obstruct the flight path of the birds, and their legs or other body parts often get entangled in the strings that the balloons are attached to, especially when they fall on trees.

– If they reach the ground, they receive the toxins released by the balloons during the time they take to degrade, including those made of rubber, which are the most innocuous, and when they break down into microparticles they permeate the surface and infiltrate until they reach the sea.

– Because the layer of water that covers the planet is greater, it is very feasible that the balloons fall into a lagoon, lake, river or sea, where fish, turtles or aquatic mammals gobble them up, mistaking them for algae, jellyfish, fish or other foods , and those specimens die asphyxiated, or by starvation, because their digestive tract is obstructed.

Therefore, balloons are not the ideal means for letters to reach the Three Wise Men.

The Ministry of the Environment asks to avoid sending them through this route so that in the future the species of marine or terrestrial biodiversity can be conserved and also avoid a painful death for them.

A good option is to send your letter through the Mexican Postal Service / Correos de México, which "to brighten the hearts of thousands of girls and boys, installed Christmas mailboxes in 337 post offices in the main cities of the 32 states to receive all letters addressed to Santa Claus and the Three Wise Men”.