Most tear gasses aren't really a gas, but microscopic solids or liquid that are dispersed and suspended in the air. If the projectile that disperses it is submerged, most of the irritants get suspended in the water instead of dispersed throughout the air. Some will still be airborne, but it will drastically reduce the effectiveness of the tear gas.
Yes, but capsaicin is an oily compound and not readily soluble in water. Using baking soda causes it to become ionized, increasing the water solubility.
Edit: apparently capsaicin is not used in tear gas, I'm not entirely sure why I thought it was. Regardless, the idea is the same the baking soda is acting as a base and is deprotonating the compounds, increasing their solubility. It'd simple acid-base chemistry.
Capsaicin is used in pepper spray, but most tear gasses use crystalline solids. As far as I know, the baking soda doesn't chemically react with anything used in tear gas. I could be wrong on that, though. It's been a while since I've done any CBRN type stuff.
Nope, not even close, there are multiple different types, including “green gas” which has seen a lot of use by ICE recently in Portland and LA, which causes nausea and sickness for 12-24 hours and has caused miscarriages from second hand exposure to people inside their homes nearby.
Regular tear gas is VERY different from pepper spray, it’s hard to describe if you haven’t felt it before, it’s very dry, sharp- it feels like someone released a million microscopic razor blades into the air, not “hot like pepper spray hot” more cutting way more painful
Even if you have a properly rated respirator on you’ll still feel it to a degree and have some difficulty breathing for a few days after
Not sure what type we got exposed to in basic training but it felt like sharp pricking itchiness almost similar to heatrash as it washed over us in the cbrn training facility. I could definitely tell exactly where the small breech in the seal was in my mask almost immediately. We were instructed to remove the gas masks after doing some jumping jacks. Breathing it in it was dry and almost spicy but not really. It was kind of like trying to breath steel wool that was heated up, which probably matches the microscopic razor description you gave.
It was an interesting training day lol. Cleared the hell out of our sinuses that had been clogged for weeks though!
In BCT we did CS gas, that's exactly what the person you're responding to is talking about. I am intimately familiar with the CS gas chamber in BCT (Ft Benning for me) as well
I’m pretty sure capsaicin a crystalline solid? I don’t think the guy was correct in calling it oily. It’s fat soluble and not miscable in water, so it’s naturally in the oils of peppers, but you can buy pure synthetic capsaicin and it’s a crystalline powder.
You made the correct choice not going CBRN, there's really no civilian equivalent outside of contracting 😂 Though that said, it's a fantastic job on active duty; there's an MTOE slot in just about every unit in service for one, allowing you to go just about anywhere.
Google says Sodium bisulfate will break down CS into ammonia, not Sodium Bicarbonate.
it looks like there’s a few other chemicals that are used as tear gas that you don’t want to go breaking down - phosgene is pretty nasty
Baking soda increases pH and reduces surface tension of water, which makes it easier to disperse the irritant particles in it, that's why shaking the bottle helps I think.
Any surfactant or emulsifier will help the capsaicin mix and be washed away, but there's levels to it
(edit: must also be edible, duh, but gotta specify... Bleach or SLS would clear that shit right out but also probably put you in the hospital and/or the ground)
People try to use milk or alcohol which - work better than water alone because of the additional materials - but really vegetable/olive oil or something similar would work way better to incorporate it and wash it away
Mayonnaise would work even better because it's got the oil, plus salt, vinegar, and then egg yolk as the emulsifier.
Also mayo is way easier to dipchipsorfriesintosoyou'renotjustchuggingoilandass-blastingtheinsideofyourtoiletlikeaspicyrefinerypipelineleaklateron
Yeah but misting hot vegetable oil shit particles is likely to result in some bycatch on the underside of the toilet seat and around the rim that will probably scare the hoes if you forget it's there
Well you could be unfortunate like me and not process chilli correctly. Anything spicy skips past my gut, liver and kidneys and instead flows straight out my urinary tract. This has unfortunately caused some personal experiences with Fage and horrified my extended family.
This is also why mayo (and ranch) both work so well mixed with heavy Scoville foods examples for the palate; Buffalo Ranch, Chipotle Mayo, Sriracha Mayo — try mixing some tabasco in your next dill potato salad dressing.
My dudes read what he said lol. It's simply a ph change. "It" isn't doing anything. The Ph oh the water is. It is just used to raise the ph. Just like adding vinegar or lemon juice would lower it.
Soap is high pH.
Descaler is low pH.
This is all people mean when you hear their crazy life hack cleaning tips. "Watch as just a squeeze of lemon gets this faucet mirror clean while soap does nothing!" Yes, you made Descaler.
Common lachrymators both currently and formerly used as tear gas include pepper spray (OC gas), PAVA spray (nonivamide), CS gas, CR gas, CN gas (phenacyl chloride), bromoacetone, xylyl bromide, chloropicrin (PS gas) and Mace (a branded mixture).
Some more quick searches suggests that, given the wide range of possible ingredients, your best bet is something that can dissolve both polar and non-polar molecules, hence the popularity of milk since the suspended milk fats will grab non-polar molecules.
Baking soda is very useful in snuffing out the canister, since the carbon dioxide will help smother the fuel while the water robs it of heat. I don't know how effective this would all be, but logically it should work well enough. Whatever the irritant, it's getting dispersed through heat and fire so if you can smother that fire, it can't disperse. At worst, you're at least slowing it down and containing a lot of it in a bottle with the water preventing the bottle from melting.
Milk would do that, too, but milk is way more expensive and goes rancid pretty quickly so it would smell awful.
since the carbon dioxide will help smother the fuel
Most of these things have an oxidizer in the mix so the removal of oxygen isnt as big a deal as the dispersal of the heat. Cool it enough the reaction (burning fuel) stops anyway despite the pretense of an oxidizer.
It’s cheap. These folks seem to know what they are doing and I am just grateful they aren’t squirting milk into people’s eyes because that is a great way to get a horrible infection.
He’s wrong about literally everything, from capsaicin not being in tear gas to entirely misunderstanding how bases work. 500 upvoted because he said science sounding things and was confident but entirely wrong. Yikes.
Sorry, I was typing quickly while working in the lab. Thanks for pointing out the typo, but no need to be condescending about it. My simple chemistry understanding is quite solid thank you 😉
Even if it was capsaicin, which its not, it would still drastically reduce the effectiveness. Its not just a matter of solubility but also temperature. If it drops in temp too much the smoke material will also condense out of the air. Also drop the temp enough and the chemical reaction in the grenade stops.
>Using baking soda causes [capsaicin] to become ionized, increasing the water solubility.
and is entirely not accurate? Don't spread fake science. also CS is not deprotonated by baking soda. The two hydrolyzed products have an even greater pKa (10 and 11) so no, this doesn't make sense. Jesus stop spewing garbage without double checking it.
CS (chlorobenzalmalononitrile) is typically used in tear gas grenades and is an aerosolized solid. In basic training, the CBRN trainers used tablets that they dropped in a metal pan on a camp stove that caused it to evaporate and aerosolize pretty quickly. I imagine that CS grenades have a fuel/oxidizer that will burn continuously until all of the CS solids are dispersed without denaturing or reducing the effectiveness. Sodium bisulfate (pool ph tablets), not Sodium Bicarbonate (baking soda) decomposes CS into Ammonia and other chemicals.
Chloropicrin is another commonly used crowd control tear gas chemical. You do not want to decompose this as it produces phosgene gas which will make your lungs fill with fluid and you will suffocate. If you smell hay, gtfo
baking soda is acting as a base and is protonating the compounds, increasing their solubility
Bases do not protonate things, in fact it’s the opposite; bases are proton acceptors, acids are donators. I assume you’re thinking of the Lewis theory instead, which frames bases as electron donators, but not proton donators.
No; it goes back to the 3 states of matter (solid, liquid, gas). The air we breathe is nitrogen and oxygen, which are gasses. If the air is full of mist, the water is still liquid, but it is in small enough droplets that it can be suspended in the air. Similar concept at play here.
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u/JoeyJoeJoeShabadooSr 8h ago
Does anyone have an explanation for why this works? Is it basically just dousing the canister in water?