YSK: Using dairy milk after being tear gassed or pepper sprayed doesn't provide more relief and has slightly increased infection risk. Use water or saline instead

usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml to You Should Know@lemmy.world – 358 points –

Generally medical professionals do not vouch for using milk for tear gas despite it often being touted. The research seems to suggest they are largely the same in providing relief

Sources to back this up

That means bacteria can contaminate the milk and potentially cause infection if applied to eyes or skin wounds. Jordt says it’s better to use water or saline solutions to wash out eyes after a tear-gas attack

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marlamilling/2020/07/21/the-risks-of-using-milk-to-soothe-tear-gassed-eyes-an-expert-says-use-water-instead/

Another source of medical professionals recommending against it

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/baltimore-protests-experts-caution-milk-antacid-wash-pepper/story?id=30653488

And a study looking at pepper spray as well

In this study, there was no significant difference in pain relief provided by five different treatment regimens. [Water vs milk vs 3 other solutions] Time after exposure appeared to be the best predictor for decrease in pain.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18924005/

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They should try beer. Capsaicin is not soluble in water, but it is in ethanol. I don't think it will help relieve the irritated membranes tho.

I suspect beer to carry a similar infection risk as milk.

Wouldn't beer have less infection risk because of the alcohol? Disclaimer, I didn't read any of the articles and have no expertise beyond drinking beer.

As far as I know, some alcoholic drinks have certain alcohol levels because those levels are the lethal levels for the fermenting bacteria used.

But there are different alcohol levels in brewed drinks, so either it’s not true or bacteria have a range of lethal temperatures.

Nitpicking: the fermentation is done by a fungus, specifically a yeast strain. The fermentation process stops when you introduce oxygen, aka open the fermentation tank, or when the sugar in the wort is depleted. The yeast then just becomes inactive and you can potentially restart the fermentation at home by putting sugar in the beer and sealing it airtight. Most commercial beers remove the yeast through filtering or pasteurizing or both tho, so that would probably only work for craft beer. And it would make the result taste terrible I assume.

Some bacteria do not tolerate alcohol at all and will die from beer, but generally beer is not a disinfectant. Vodka isn't either by the way, still too low levels of alcohol. But it works better than beer.

Beer doesn't have a high enough alcohol volume level to be a disinfectant (recommended is 70+% ethanol, beer has 4-5%), just high enough to get drunk after the fermenting process comes to a halt when the sugar in the wort is sufficiently depleted.

I would think that alcohol on the eyes wouldn't do too many good things to them, however

Best practice is to use saline and a clean cloth to clean spray off with mechanical force

Yeah but no. I've been tear gased, and water does nothing but make it worse. The capsacin is dissolved in an oil, and using water will only spread it over your body (and that shit hurts a lot everywhere it touches). Use milk, it will provide instant pain relief. The threat of bacteria in pasteurized milk is the same as in water, and odds are, after dumping milk all over, you're probably going to wash yourself off afterwards.

if you're gased, don't waste time following this bad advice. Take it from someone who's actually had been gassed, only milk works. Don't try water.

The capsacin is dissolved in an oil,

That only counts for OC gas (pepper spray) - most anti-dissent chemical weaponry doesn't contain capsaicin. Milk won't do shit for CS gas, for instance. For CS gas, water is the only thing that works.

Considering how many different types of this shit there actually is and the fact that they can mix them up pretty easily regardless of what the law actually says makes a one-size-fits-all solution pretty difficult.

edit: did I just say a one-size-fits-all solution to this is difficult? Silly me.

CS gas

Science Direct website says that

In contrast to other forms of chemical exposure, irrigating the affected area will only intensify and prolong the effects of CS gas or particles.

Not sure about that paper - it recommends ocular irrigation (with water) for OC gas... the exact thing you mentioned hurting so bad in your first response. The thing to remember here is that a lot of the discourse on this doesn't distinguish between the use of a liquid to flood particles away from skin and membranes through it's kinetic action (possible with CS gas and very necessary with white phosporous) and relying on the chemical properties of the liquid itself to bring any kind of relief.

There are perceptional reasons why it may feel like milk worked better such as it being cooled vs using room temperature water. Or from being the second thing used. Or from various different factors

But the research above suggests it doesn't do as much as people think it does

The infection risks are not the same. Milk has stuff in it that microbes like for growing where water doesn't have nearly all that. Other stuff can enter inside. The eye infection pathway is concerning especially right now when bird flu seems to enter that way and is in large quatities of dairy milk. Not all pasturization methods are certain to actually remove it (i.e flash pasturization might not)

Edit: A minor point to clarify, capsaicin is in pepper spray but not tear gas. They often do get conflated but they are different

For all the effort you've put into trying to convince people that water is the answer, it's reasonable at this point to ask you to try it yourself. Get yourself some pepper spray from the store, and then spray your skin. Try to wash it off with water. Wait until you're in sufficient pain and the water clearly didn't do anything, then try milk, and feel your pain evaporate. You can do this experiment in less than an hour. Report back when you're finished, or you can delete all this misinformation. Whichever.

Yeah, if the irritant is capsaicin I would think that milk would wash it off sensitive tissue more effectively than water as capsaicin is more lipid soluble than water soluble. I think if you eat a spicy chili, to stop the pain you need to wash the irritant off your tongue and milk does this more effectively than water.

I'll remember this the next time I feel like going to the US

For pepper spray, in the army we had them rub baby shampoo in the eyes while providing them lots of water and sit in a fanned area.

For those that don't know army MPs have to get this done for training.

I did medical support for cop trainees in texas doing the same thing. I appreciate making them experience it before they did it.

LPT: Its better to be tased. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkMkGOpAF4s

I've never been tased but I strongly suspect it would be taser, tear gas, pepper spray from best to worst. The effects of pepper spray is intense and long lasting, even when you shower after pepper spray will leave your pores and hit your face again, and maybe even run down to your junk if you aren't careful

I have experience with both from the military. Tear gas isn’t as bad as being tased. Also tear gas you build up a tolerance.

Wait wait wait wait.

How did you end up getting tear gassed in the military? How did you end up getting tased in the military? Why? Who would think that was useful or necessary?

You train with tear gas to get you used to it and to get you to trust in your gas mask. First in basic and then again every few months. With the taser we used them during combatives training so you would know what it feels like in case someone stole yours and used it against you. The thought is it may help you prevent you pissing your pants.

I got pepper sprayed in the military. In order to be allowed to wear pepper spray on our belts (for law enforcement), we had to be pepper sprayed and fight someone off.

I found it strange, because it's not like we had to know what it was like to be shot and fight back. It was also one of the worst experiences of my life. Getting accidentally splashed across the eyes with hot sauce ended up not so bad simply by comparison, so I had that going for me.

My uncle went to job core to become a security guard and they oc sprayed him.

Did you ride the full 8 on the taser, or did they make you do the instructor 100 seconds?

I’d agree the 100 looks horrible, give me the spray in that case.

Milk of magnesia is a common first aid go-to in edit:those situations in my experience. Good to know.

One of the studied things was using antacids in that pepper spray study and didn't find much benfit for it for pepper spray. There currently doesn't really seem to much that research confirm works any better than any other liquid over the eyes

Leaf blower or strong fan to the face to help your tears wash away the papper spray is best relief. It feels better while it's blowing in your face too.

Kinda easier to handle while you are panicking and your vision is impaired too.

Capsaicin is not water soluble. It is only dissolved in oil or in alcohol. Washing with milk is better than washing with vodka. But water is 100% useless.