Tear Gas Exposure: What to Do If You Are Tear-Gassed
Wear eye protection. If you’re not wearing a face shield, you need a way to keep particles out of your eyes. While ideally we’d all be equipped with gas masks, Dr. Heisler says tight swim goggles work great. Sunglasses and eyeglasses won’t seal out contaminants, but they can at least help protect you if you’re directly sprayed, Dr. Heisler says.
Wear long sleeves, pants, and socks. “It can get hot, but the more of your body you cover, the less of your skin gets exposed,” Dr. Heisler says. “Like masks, the denser the material of your clothes the less [tear gas] will get in.”
Skip the makeup. “Makeup is often oily or watery, and so it can create a surface that makes the tear gas stick to your lips and eyes and face,” Dr. Heisler says.
Leave your contacts at home. “Don’t wear contacts, because the tear gas particles will stick under them,” Dr. Heisler says.
Bring lots of water. While you don’t want to be weighed down, you’ll be glad to have extra water on hand to immediately rinse off tear gas. (Details on how to do that in the next section.)
What to do after you’ve been teargassed
Getting teargassed can be painful and scary. Mitigate its physical effects as quickly as you can by taking the following steps—to the best of your ability in the circumstances. And, of course, the order you do these things in depends on what you have with you (like water bottles), what you have access to around you (like running water), and where you have been exposed (like eyes vs. body).
1. Get out of there if you can.
No matter the situation, “You want to minimize your exposure as much as you can, so the most important thing to do is get out of the cloud of tear gas,” Dr. Heisler says, “and away from the general area and to fresh air as soon as you can.” The CDC recommends seeking out high ground, if possible, because the RCAs are heavier than air and tend to form dense clouds closer to the ground.
2. If your eyes are impacted, flush them out.
If your eyes have been exposed and are burning or blurry, treat them first if you’re able. They’re often the most painful area, and having trouble seeing can be disorienting (and dangerous), Dr. Heisler says.
You’re instinctively going to want to rub your eyes, but touching your eyes (or mouth or nose) “just makes it worse,” Dr. Heisler says. Find a drinking fountain or sink in a public restroom if you can and flush them out using handfuls or streams of water for 10 to 15 minutes, the CDC says. If water bottles are all you have at the moment, use those as a preliminary rinse until you can get to a water source, Dr. Heisler says.
BTW, it’s normal to actually feel worse when you start rinsing your eyes or body. “Initially, water can make it worse, but using copious amounts of water will flush it off,” as Rohini J. Haar, M.D., M.P.H., a medical research and investigations advisor at Physicians for Human Rights and a visiting professor at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, previously told SELF.
And although you might see people recommending using other liquids, like milk, those are not widely tested or recommended treatments. “I would stick to water,” Dr. Heisler says.
3. Rinse off your body.
“The next thing you want to do is clean yourself off as soon as you can,” Dr. Heisler says. Strip off any unnecessary contaminated layers ASAP and “get to a source of water where you can strip down and rinse off wherever you’ve been exposed with as much water as you can,” Dr. Heisler says. Since you are unlikely to be able to hop into an actual shower right away, try to find a drinking fountain or public restroom. (The CDC recommends soap and water, but do what you can.) If all you have at the moment is bottles of water, use those as first rinse until you can get to a better water source.
4. Take a real shower.
It’s going to be hard to get rid of all the tear gas until you take a long and proper shower, so do that as soon as possible. “Just drench yourself with lots and lots of cool water. You want to stay in there and rinse off for a long time, to the point that you can't smell it anymore,” Dr. Heisler says, which might take as long as 30 minutes, she notes. “That will help quickly relieve the pain and irritation.”
https://www.self.com/story/what-to-do-if-tear-gassed, GO TO SAUBIO DIGITAL FOR MORE ANSWERS AND INFORMATION ON ANY TOPIC
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