The Truth about Surplus Gas Masks

hello this is going to be my attempt at doing a video all about military surplus respirators and you know the truth and falsehoods about army surplus or gas masks and things like that because there's loads of misconceptions everywhere lots of people have varying opinions on things so what I want to do is go over some of the opinions people have talked about what I think's true with them what a lot the evidence backs up as being true what you can rely on what you can't rely on general buying advice for army surplus and stuff like that now this video isn't intended at people who are gas mask collectors like myself or respirators collectors this is intended for people who don't have necessary loads and money to spend and they want to get a good working respirator for personal protection you know from an RP army surplus store and not pay loads and money for it so what we're going to look at in this video is the types of gas masks are out there how the filters work some of the things you need to be aware of some of like the ways you might be attempting you might attempt to miss sell you something of they're not honest or might have misinformation about a product which they inadvertently you know miss how are you that way so what I'm going to do to start with is look closely at a mask and then we're going to go over you know the important parts of it and what you need to know if you're actually going to get a mask itself so this is an Israeli Shalom for a one it's the Israeli civilian gas mask and it's a very simple gas mask but this yeah I'm unscrewing here if you're not familiar with how a gas mask or respirator works this is the filter this is the most important part of a gas mask or respirator the full name or the proper name for a gas mask is an air purifying respirator that means it purifies the air that goes into it that's what the filter does the filters composed of 2 layers are particulate ly at the front and a vapor layer at the back and then normally another particulate layer so the charcoal that's made up with a vapor layer company count so how it works the particular filter at the front will particulate layer captures all the little bits of dust that could be irradiated dust irradiated materials hazardous materials biological threats like anthrax they get stuck in the front of the filter and can't get out so they're trapped in there then what happens is for chemicals or for example chemical weapons sort of you know nasty things in the air like that the vapors because they're about the same size as oxygen molecules they can't just simply put an air filter on that block those so what they have to do of that is they have the charcoal filter in here and what the charcoal does is for a process called absorption not absorption but absorption the actual chemical sticks to the charcoal and the clean air comes out the back of the filter so without the filter the gas mask is useless it might protect your face from chemical splashing on it and things like that but what is actually the bit that protects you and cleans the air is the filter so one of the main things you really need to know when buying surplus stuff is getting filters that are modern and work for it is the most important thing really I would say above all out of a gas mask ever than the mask itself as it works so many people will buy a MRSA technically works but uses some sort of weird outdated filter system or just you know into a way that the filters become horribly overpriced because they've got a mask with a weird sort of filter system that you know they've made a really bad sort of investment in that mask and shot themselves in the foot so what we're going to look at in this video as well is the types of filters you can get and the types of filters you want to get but before I go any further I will say if you're buying a gas mask for personal protection the small industrial mask always go for forty millimeter nato stanag filters that's the type like these and nothing I'll be covering in this video is filters that aren't nato filters that a lot of sellers will claim they are now a concern a lot of people have is don't gas masks will expire when a gas mask gets old won't it fall apart will it lose its protective abilities and there's lots of misconceptions or illness the thing you have to understand is a gas mask is very very simple there's not much that can go wrong with one if it's stored properly so to look at this Israeli mask you have the intake there where the filters attached to that simply just goes into the mask and then you basically breathe through the mask the main job of the mask is simply to protect your face and hold the filter in place so what this mask does is it has the intake there next to it has the exhale valve and a voice diaphragm that means when you breathe out the air comes out they're out and trying to force its way out you know in another part of the mask and the voice diaphragm means other people can hear you more clearly you've then got like a plastic or polycarbonate type lens and that's actually sort of sealed into the rubber of the mask that's Ozzie's so you can see out on chemicals can't get into your eyes it would be the same as wearing safety goggles basically and obviously the rubber that fully protects your face so when you look at the sort of primary parts of a gas mask or respirator and they're very simple there's not much it can go wrong in my opinion what would normally go wrong with masks because it's even been left out in sunlight like non-stop and the UV radiation has burned bits of the rubber damage to rubber that way or the vowels in the mask were quite weak to begin with and how they've totally failed but on the vast majority of gas masks I've got I've got over 70 gas loss in my collection now and I'd say pretty much all my cold war cold war surplus masks for words only one or two of that massive number I've got is actually not usable so the important thing to sort of pay attention to is that respirators themselves and not that likely to fail if they've been kept properly so an age of a respirator doesn't simply mean it's going to fail now when it actually comes to sort of departments of health and safety for lots of work things or certain military standards lots of them will have a very high-end standard that the respirator must be within 10 or 20 years of its manufacture date to be valid now it doesn't mean they don't work after that it's simply that due to obviously the fact that you could be risking some of these life and they could be sued if something goes wrong they would much rather keep ordering new masks in on 10-year sort of intervals or have a set amount of mass coming in each year and I'm retiring the ones you know which have now grown quite old as and that's normally when they end up being sold a surplus because they don't want the risk of anything going wrong it's a bit like people who buy a car and then within a few years buy a new car on trade in the old one because they don't want to you know if they've got the money to do it they don't want to worry about mechanical faults and repairing parts however obviously as I'm sure many of people know you can buy a second-hand are in very good condition and keep it running so the age simply doesn't matter and there's a lot more hook than go wrong on a carton and go wrong when the gas mask okay so what's one of the big things you need to watch out for then because the Marshalls he doesn't go wrong when it starts getting old one of the main things you need to look out for is filter compatibility because moths come in all different types of filter setups you need to get a mask where you know you can easily buy filters for it or work so let's have a look at this mask to start with and I will show you one of the biggest things you need to avoid with a gas mask this is a cheap filter gas mask unlike the previous gas masks I showed which had a 40 millimeter filter that's screwed in very easy to change them they keep with seals on each end of the filter this is a cheek filter gas mask now these are kind of a failed military concept the u.s. used the mask called the m17 for about 50 years before finally realizing it maybe wasn't a good idea to keep it in service but lots of overcome countries copied the design this is to check M 10 M which is a Czechoslovakian sort of copy of an M 17 now the rubber quality is very good on this the straps are very good there's lots of good things about the mask the fundamental floor is at house cheek filters now cheek filters unlike normal filters have to be installed inside in the cheeks of the mask and that's a very difficult thing to do it's a very frustrating task whereas you have the stretched rubber try and push them in without ripping the mask and they have to go in at just the right angle now in theory once the cheek filters in the mask it is fine for use however it's not that great mostly because if you're buying them gas masks a surplus and you want it to protect you nobody makes cheek filters anymore because it's an obsolete design so why you can still buy some that are still technically sealed and may work for a bit once you open them they're not going to last long you're gonna have a lot of problem changing the filters so avoid these mouths like the plague if you're buying a mask for personal protection especially if it's you know chemical and biological warfare type stuff these masks would do fine to protect you from radioactive fallout in terms of particles going into your lungs they do protect you from tear gas but they're not going to do much else and you can get other masks around the same price to take 40 millimeter NATO filters that will protect you from everything this month protects you from and more so don't go for cheek filter masks now another thing to look out for is don't get 60 millimeter masks you can fairly use these bits a lot more effort than it's worth in my opinion if you're you if you don't already have on the amount laying around now these would be examples such as American in line and em line copies like this British light anti gas respirators and derivatives like the Canadian sea free basically these masks were before 40 millimeter NATO was a standard sixty millimeter NATO as to standard it's a bit like the difference between five five six and seven sixty two NATO basically they standardized to a smaller size but what it means is the filter is just simply a sixty millimeter screw at the end it connects the mast not a 40 millimeter screw now the issue is that nobody makes sixty millimeter filters anymore because nobody makes sixty millimeter gas masks anymore so what generally happened is countries that have these saw masks in service if they didn't keep producing a sixty millimeter filters Reitman right up until the end of the masks lifespan what they ended up doing was making converters that went from sixty to forty millimeter and then used 40 millimeter NATO filters the same as everybody else the point I'm getting at is if you end up buying one of these masks to get good working reliable filters for it you'll have to buy a sixty to forty millimeter converter which adds a bit more money on top of the mask you're getting so for you know ease of getting a mask as much as I really like masks like these Finnish m60 ones save yourself the you know bother and get a 40 millimeter NATO mask to begin with it will just simply cut a lot of messing about tryna then fit something else that you can fit compatible filters to the mask now the probably a most tempting thing you'll fall into the trap of trying to buy for getting a surplus gas mask is old Soviet or Warsaw Pact masks these are known as ghost 40 millimeter masks now this is where there'll be a lot of confusion or sometimes mis-selling from sellers the problem is that 40 millimeter ghosts and 40 millimeter nato filters are not compatible with each other the filter screw is the same size but the pitch of the fret and a couple of other things is slightly different so the issue is if you buy a Soviet mask even if the mask perfectly works like many of them do some of these are very good masks they're a bit primitive in design but they work which is the most important thing in a respirator the issue is that they have gosta filters an issue of course filters is a lot of them contain asbestos and a lot of them are outdated and you know not going to work because they're too old so a cost Hilter would obviously screw in just like a NATO filter but if you then put this on the slight breathing through the filter who knows what you're going to be breathing in not good stuff for your lungs now the problem is a lot of sellers will sound cost filters claiming they are nato filters or they will sell you ghost mask claiming they take nato filters this isn't true ghost masks take ghost filters NATO mask take nato stanag filters now there are a couple of exceptions Israeli and Chinese masks as far as I'm aware I have a normalised thread inside the mask which means they can take both filters but that's because the mask has a special friend that's designed to catch on to both types of screw friend there's also some normalised filters like Polish fb5 filters and some Polish filters from after communism ended the logic is with those filters that Poland is buying new masks and 40 millimeter nato but they had all these 40 millimeter ghost masks still in storage that they wanted to use the reservists and other things so they had to come up with a way of making a new filter that would fit both masks but this is done at the filters end the vast majority of ghost filters obviously will not work on the NATO mask and vice versa at least not properly you can actually force NATO mask filters on to ghost masks but with the vast majority of them that will leave a slight air gap between the screw threads of the filter which means if you're inhaling stuff the toxic gas is gonna go around the filter into the mask some filters will work from what people have told me but you know I personally wouldn't risk it when you can just buy a 40 millimeter NATO mask for not much money you know and other issues is if you try and force a NATO filter onto your ghost mask there's a chance you could bend the metal here around where the filter goes in if you bend the metal where the filter goes in you're going to have problems so for simplicity reasons is there's nothing really I'm going to complain about the masks but just because so many ghost filters contain asbestos nearly all of them now because the Cold War's you know been over for nearly 30 years don't use the filters that these masks come with just because they're old they're not going to work vast majority of them and they leak and if they leak they leak asbestos which is not good to inhale there's lots of surplus sellers that are very dishonest and will try and claim these filters are perfectly safe there are lots of lab reports you can find online I've done videos about this before but you know whenever a proper lab tests these and publishes the reports they always have asbestos in and this isn't like the anti-russia fobian in russia phobia stuff we have in the West at the moment that gently generally did just used asbestos in ghost filters because it was cheap at the time to put in and would help protect the wearer but now you know 30 years on from what these filters being made it's not a good idea to risk your health breathing through it so we've established you need to get a 40 millimeter NATO gas mask now what you need to do is get lots of 40 millimeter NATO NBC CBRN or a bec p3 filters these are all kind of various ways of saying the same thing but basically that's a filter that's called a combination filter it means it protects you from combined particular and vapor threats of various types of gases and vapors so the idea is that if you buy a combination filter you know pretty much whatever you come across if it's something a gas mask and stop the filter will stop it now there's a lot of debate around this of filters so I'm going to give you my honest opinion on it but you might want to do your own research just so you know I can be impartial and say maybe I'm not totally correct on this but there's lots of arguments about this too anyway with filters they always have a shelf life on them and when the manufacturer makes a filter they basically say do not use the filter after a certain date and filters do expire unlike masks as I was saying earlier which will last much longer than they're sort of shelf life for use of the military and things like that when you have an actual filter that contains activated charcoal often impregnated with other things you know and other filter parts over time bits of the filter will break down when bits the filter breakdown it loses its effectiveness when a filter becomes too ineffective it's not going to protect you from vapor so always pay attention to the manufacturer's expiry dates however they will last longer than that expiry date for the most part the manufacturers will put a shorter expiry date on them the filter will actually last to cover themselves in case something goes wrong like I say must be retired from military surplus so when you buy filters I definitely advise you to buy filters that are within 20 years of their expiry date and when I say within 20 years of the expiry date if the filter was made in 1990 it ran out in 2010 so as a 20 year expiry date don't use it any longer than that is my opinion if you want to trust it but obviously that's within its actual date so let's say it was a 10 year filter and it was made in 1990 expired in 2000 it's all sealed that's where I would personally probably say up to 2010 it may still work different manufacturers have different expiry dates they put on their filters so it's worth reading into that because it depends how the filters are sealed how they make it in the factory there's lots of factors that could come into play how well the filter works sadly you can't know if the filter is going to work until you put it on and stuff tries to get into the mask and by that point if it's you know something dangerous is too late if it doesn't work for you so you do need to obviously be aware that if you really want the best level of protection by filters that are still in date don't blow it by surplus filters go to a hardware store that sells 40 millimeter NATO fret and filters which are in a Beck p3 rating buy those you'll be safe or splash out a load of cash and buy you know these filters directly from their manufacturers who'll be happy to sell them you the VA you could be paying something like 50 pounds or dollars per filter it can be a lot of money but this is where in my opinion you should buy a good simple 40 millimeter NATO mask that's going to work and keep a lot of money aside with filters you know here's an old Swiss filter the Cold War now what I like is when filters are in a bag or another kind of thing where you know they've not been tampered with you can see that there's a seal on the top there and a seal on the bottom lots of filters have these but what you want to do make sure is that you know the filter hasn't been tampered with because a lot of filters you can pull the plug out on and put it back in so if an army-surplus seller for example gets a load of filters in where the tabs are hanging out and then he pops them all back in before putting on the shelf and then you go and say all that fit was sealed sadly it's not been sealed all the time mmm the problem with filters is well they have quite long expiry date when they're sealed as soon as you open the filter you know pull it pollutants in the air can start getting into the filter and they will start wearing down that filter so life of a filter reduces drastically when it's actually exposed to stuff now in theory if you had a filter you opened it briefly used it you know nowhere near used it to capacity you plug that filter back up that filter is still going to last but bear in mind you have cut down you know the time it's going to last by quite a lot so this is one of the reasons where unless you're using a filter for training purposes I would HIGHLY advise actually splashing some money out and getting filters that are definitely in date as I've said a lot of people will make the arguments that you know as long as it filters sealed properly it will last indefinitely yes it will last indefinitely that indefinitely does not mean infinitely and if your life's at risk why risk it with an old cheap filter so let's say you've bought a mask you found one that's roughly in your size for actually finding a mask in your size I'd recommend you take head measurements and then just try and look online to find what sort of mask will fit you so masks like these Israeli for a ones are very good because they're designed in one size fits all setup red ops but you can generally find guide to some of the masks online the issue is lots of militaries and other people who issued masks we'll just do a fit check where somebody will take a measurement of your head or a guesstimate of your head then issue you the closest size mask so I'm afraid it's basically impossible to tell everybody what size masks they need I have to guess them on myself a lot I normally buy medium masks and hope they fit most of them do but some masks have weird sizing things as well anyway let's say you've got your mask and it fits what you want to do when you get or you've ordered an it's arrived is as well as buying the filters your actually going to use may be by one army surplus filter that doesn't cost you very much and you're going to use this as a training filter so what you're going to want to do is practice taking the filter on and off with both the masks in your hand and mask on your face and then what you want to do is do fit tests with the mask the idea of these is you put your self an environment where there's something of a very strong odor mmm if the odor can't be smell of the mask tightened it means there's not a gap around your face the familes in the mask work and your filters working um however as said when you do an actual if you ever need the mask in reality cut open one of your new filters stick that on don't risk using an old one when it comes to that but for training expire not expired filters because they actually still work but out of manufacturers date filters the still worker very good for testing a mask now there's multiple methods for testing a mask and lots of these methods you know again this can cause argument so people say you need to do it this for you to do it that way as long as you're testing that a mask is pressed tightly against your face making a seal the filter is working it doesn't really matter which method you use as long as you can't smell an odor while the mask is on your face and the filters on you know the mask makes an airtight seal now what I've actually bought now is what is technically known as ice and mill acetate or banana oil to us plebs and what banana oil is is it's an incredibly strong synthetic smelling thing that's used to test respirators now I'll do a quick test of it but I'll also tell you how they properly do the test so let me just put the filter back on here and then I will put the mask on mm-hm so once you've got the mast on you get your iso male acetate then you breathe in for your nose you get a sense of smell and you move that all around the face of the mouth now when they actually properly use banana oil for the tests what they do is they put a plastic kind of bag tent thing over you they dab loads this onto a cloth which is pinned to the inside of the bag and then you have to sit there or stand there breathing for a couple of minutes and the idea is that they test it for about two minutes to see if I smell enters you know your nostrils if the filter and masks working you can't smell anything because the filters blocking it and there's no way that is getting around the sides of the mask or vowels failed on the mask now the reason they use stuff like this is because it's got a very strong sort of distinctive odor it's not actually really unpleasant this stuff it is weird that you'd know if you smell it because it's a strong smell now the method I use and some people have said it doesn't work there doesn't work because if you understand how clinically you know or scientifically a respirator filter works how respirators work it works just the same as using any other smelly thing and that method is to find an enclosed room maybe a small bathroom or a cupboard close the door spray a load of air freshener or deodorant and once you do that what happens is that obviously the entire room is enclosed there's no way for this stuff to get out easily even if there's a little gap into the door or whatever and the smell is very strongly overpowering if you can't smell it you know untie me a couple of minutes of the mask on you're all good as soon as you break the seal on the mask it should be enough in the air that it's you know quite unpleasant to be in that room and you want to get out of there in the military they use CS gas which is actually particulate not a gas known as tear gas to test them but again the logic is exactly the same you're in an enclosed space with a mask on with something that smells very strong that you're going to have some sort of reaction to if within a couple of minutes of having the mask on sealed you're not reacting to it as long as your sense of smell somehow you know and faulty and that works as long as you know you can't smell it the mask is working and your current filters working but as I've said when you actually need a mask in an emergency make sure you have in date sealed filters ideally that you can crack open that you know you've got a guarantee on working but as long as you've tested the masking you know no mask is working the whole point of those tests isn't really testing your filters as much as you need to know if that's working not the Masters at fault the whole point is to test the seal on the mask because if something's wrong with the seal you will smell it regardless of what you're using as long as it's a strong smell in an enclosed space and once you smell it with the mask on you know something's gone wrong so to summarize what I've said in this video and hopefully it makes sense to everybody is make sure you go for a 40 millimeter NATO mask not a cheek filter mask not a ghost mask not a 60 millimeter NATO Mouse but go for a 40 millimeter NATO mask because you can find these filters at least generally at sensible prices if you shop around as I said be prepared to spend more on the filters potentially than the masks but this is the bit that will you know most likely save your life there's not much that can go wrong with a mask but obviously make sure it's not damaged once you get a mask to check it's got a good fit with your head and the mask works go into an enclosed space of something that smells very strong keep it on for a few minutes if you can't smell any think within a few minutes you know the mask works and then just stockpile a load of in date filters you also want with your training filter to practice taking the masks on and off changing a filter of the mask on you know doing all sorts of things to get established with the mask also bear in mind a mask with a filter only protects you from a lot of threats things like nerve agents and other chemicals that attack the skin or kill you through skin contact would require for NBC or CBN so I've done other videos on those if you're interested but personally I kind of think if it gets to the level where you're gonna need a full body suit on with advanced warning to survive it might be you know potentially better to die in me um think quickly a bit like you know of a nuclear war maybe the survivors or what envy the dead now that's not the kind of point I want to get into of this video but what on top of getting at is a mask and to only do so much to protect you make sure you use combination filters because you're not going to know in advance really what sort of gas vapor particle threat you're going to be exposed to but the key points are get a 40 millimeter NATO mask check it fits you and works and then keep the stockpile of filters and make sure you know how to put on the mask take the mask off under pressure and things like that but hopefully that's cleared a lot of stuff up about the truths and sort of lies regarding army surplus gas masks lots of these masks do work there's lots of types and masks available but make sure if you're getting it for your own protection you get something that's in 40 millimeter NATO just simply because that's kind of not the obsolete mask now you

Channel: Weaponsandstuff93

Views: 22,652

Rating: 4.9590583 out of 5

Keywords: weapons and stuff 93, Weaponsandstuff93, gas mask, respirator, surplus gas mask, NBC mask, CBRN mask, real gas mask, air filter, breathing filter, The Truth about Surplus Gas Masks

Id: 7kgHtU2rozc

Length: 26min 58sec (1618 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 24 2017