We've released these Chinese lanterns while we were in Hong Kong, but never heard about these problems, which are quite serious. Okay, fair enough, there's no livestock in HK, but I was told that they were biodegradable. In UK, either cows are dying from ingesting the Chinese lanterns, getting into the feeds and coastguards mistakenly thinking the red light was a red distress signals. I've seen these lanterns being sold at an online Irish site, so not sure how many of these were let loose into the wild.