How do Gas Masks work?

everybody I want to do a video on how gas masks work because I think a lot of people don't really actually know and it's quite simple but if I just do a very quick video on how they actually work so the gas mask itself all that really does is protect your face and eyes and make it easier to breathe through a filter because it's all a self-contained unit when the masks on your face it creates a vacuum and that means air can only come in through this part assuming there's no rips in the mask the filter and air comes out the exhaled port which will be somewhere else on the mask and normally close to where the filter goes in so the masks more of a convenience thing it's there to protect your face and make sure you know everything is all self-contained so the important part of a gas mask so I'll remove the mask for now you see where the intake port is a it works using rubber seals normally so this one can't go in that way held seals made the seal can't go out so basically when you breathe in it's forced through that seal when you breathe out it's forced through this seal which keeps the air sort of flowing in and out correctly from the mask so it doesn't depressurize so that's the mask itself masks come with straps or rubber hoods like this and the mark masks themselves very simple so put that aside for a second we'll look at the filter so this is a Russian filter from the Cold War these may or may not be safe to wear but I'll explain to you how they actually work and all mask filters are pretty much the same so inside the mask and this probably won't be visible on the camera very well you might just see a corner of it there is that the first layer you have normally in a mask filter is what we'd call an aerosol filter or a particulate filter and how that works is when air comes in through the mask of gas so it's a poisonous gas the aerosol filter is designed to block the harmful gases and how that works is the aerosol filter is made of a compound asbestos is used in World War two where it is packed very tightly together other masks have used paper type things or used what's used a lot male is is the insulation stuff and I forgot the name but fiberglass that's it fiberglass and basically because these materials are sort of very thick and they have very small holes in them you can use that to let the oxygen through small holes but keep how a lot of the gases that might be denser and then therefore don't fit through so they're blocked from entering just a little dust mask type thing uses this but a very basic level like a very small kind of filter that dust because dust is you know visible char is obviously a lot bigger than air or oxygen so the air or oxygen can get through where the dust will be blocked on this killed here it's like any sort of dust filter but a bit more fine sort of holes than you'd have on the sort of normal dust filter but that's how it works essentially glorified dust filter so on an industrial sort of dust mask you just have a very simple sort of one just to keep out dust on sort of master spraying pesticide it be a bit more complicated but it's the same sort of thing and on earth sort of military filter it's the same but you know very fine holes and a bigger area so it's more effective and you can breathe more easily then we gets a second layer which is activated charcoal which is normally used in mobile one other substances we use I had a similar effect but activated charcoal is the best thing really that's been developed for it an activated charcoal has a very dense surface area so what the activated charcoal does is it's used to neutralize gases or chemicals that might get through the first layers such as poisons and then what happen is because the charcoal has a very dense surface area what will happen is chemicals are absorbed onto it and I'm saying absorbed not absorbed because it's slightly different but absorbs where things stick to it but don't go into it so basically poisonous elements would get with sticks to the charcoal and the oxygen would carry on fruit to show you what activated charcoal is I've got some activated charcoal tablets and hopefully you'll be able to see that there these just sort of black tablets they've got activated charcoal inside but these are designed if you've got like stomachaches and how actually charcoals work tablets work is if you had a stomach 8-track wind you take them the trap get strapped on to the tablets so it's not causing bloating activated charcoal like this although it's administered more salt directly can be used to treat poisoning as well in the stomach so it's really useful stuff activated charcoal I'd have a tablet but that's aesthetically staged as a mask you first have your particulate filter which is like a very fine mesh if you want to say that made of a sudden sort of compound say asbestos or whatever else fiberglass paper and the idea is the cotton maybe your gas is try and go through but the gases can't actually get through or some of the gases at least can't get through there but the oxygen can because of the house smaller holes up then you get to your activated charcoal section and you can just about hear that rattling the charcoal inside and what the activated charcoal does as mentioned is certain chemicals that get through the first stage then stick to the charcoal and don't go through there anything more sophisticated than that you need an SCBA unit which is a self-contained breathing apparatus the underwater version is called a scuba which I'm sure everyone's heard of and that's basically where you have an oxygen tank attached to the mask and the oxygen tank provides you air so you inhale through the you know would come for the same place of the filter on the intake but you've not got a filter you've got a scuba tank you inhale with that then exhale out the air so you're limited to how much oxygen is in your scuba tank or SCBA tank your oxygen tank but obviously that's completely fine because that's purified air that you've got from somewhere is bottled up so you've got like an oxygen reserve because one thing to mention with gas masks a lot of people don't actually seem to know is that if you're in an environment where you won't get oxygen you will suffocate of the mask on for example if you're in a house fire or in some a very dense smoke you can suffocate because although the mask filter is very useful at stopping you choking to death following up on the smoke and the smoke getting into your lungs the filter can't provide you oxygen so if there's no oxygen to inhale you will still suffocate so that's one important thing to remember as the gas mask isn't designed to provide your oxygen union contained breathing apparatus for that another thing you can get is a rebreather and what a rebreather is or a rebreather is you have a sort of pack for it and it can pet contains the system and I'm not sure totally how they work but I'm assuming it's a chemical reaction that manages to turn carbon dioxide back into oxygen in the tank so that's designed so you can for a limited period to breathe out and then recycle your oxygen but a rebreather obviously eventually will run out because it's using a chemical sort of formula inside or something to give you oxygen when you exhale carbon dioxide and in that case your exhale tube is also linked in so you'd have one pipe going from the unit to the inhale another pipe coming out as an exhaust and it will cycle through a unit so that's how they work and as I said they can't provide you with oxygen and this filter is basically designed so until it gets fully used it will filter air coming through and chemicals will absorb stick to the charcoal filter so they can't get through to the user pretty much all masks a design like this it's the current sort of system it's probably not going anywhere the system's been around since World War One World War two the same it's only really since the 50s and onwards the 60s a charm asbestos top being used and other sort of compounds were used that were safer say some house like this the Russian filters we don't know exactly what's in them there might be a compound containing asbestos but it's not a big block of blue asbestos and then you have your charcoal filter and charcoal just does its job of taking the chemical the nasty chemicals away so that's how a gas mask works went on a bit longer than I intended but that's all there is to it

Channel: Weaponsandstuff93

Views: 91,522

Rating: 4.8672624 out of 5

Keywords: weapons and stuff 93, Weaponsandstuff93, Sports Goods, Sports Equipment, field sports, Survival skills - Media genre, weapons, How do Gas Masks work?, Gas mask, gasmask, respirator, gas mask training, mask, safety, NBC mask, CBRN mask, surplus mask, gas mask filter, How gas masks work, GP5 gas mask, Russian gp5, gas, military mask, civilian mask, instructions, gp-5, gp-5 gas mask, How it works, How does it work?

Id: 85Iu9vRQawQ

Length: 8min 30sec (510 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 16 2016