Lining Up to Buy a Piece of Security

Brent Shapiro, a totally sane Venice comedy writer, doesn’t think for a minute that gas masks will save him in the event of a biological or chemical attack.

Indeed, he was so mortified about his irrational impulse to buy some that when he entered a military surplus store last week he couldn’t even get up his courage to ask for them. A woman next to him had to.

Still, he walked out with two reject masks from the top of a heap of remnants--one Swedish, one Russian--not even enough for his wife and two small daughters. He knew that even soldiers must be taught how to use them, so they don’t suffocate. Still, he got no instructions from store personnel, except a 15-second rundown on filters.

The masks sit in a bag in his car, because he is too embarassed to tell his wife, and he doesn’t want to frighten his children.

“Intellectually you know that the delivery of this material is impossible to protect against. But for some reason having them makes me feel better,” said Shapiro. “I guess it makes me feel like a better father.”

Gas masks are sold out just about everywhere in America. Many consumers are being told they’ll have to wait up to six weeks to get one. Prices have tripled, quadrupled and more. Scan the online catalogs for a gas mask, and nearly every description is followed by “sold out!” A batch of 30 Israeli gas masks sold on EBay for more than $100 each last week--in a single purchase that topped $3,000, and stunned surplus-store owners who have long stocked the ungainly masks to sell to trick-or-treaters with a morbid streak.

Long relegated to dark corners of military history, and dusty, forgotten bins in the back of surplus stores, gas masks have sprung to the fore of the American consciousness. They have become a symbol--of fear and self-defense. In the popular imagination, they have become a talisman against terror.

But should you want a clammy rubber talisman of your own--if you can even find one--there is something you should know: Chances are it will be useless.

While the military has detectors able to sense chemicals in the air that can be blocked by a mask, the civilian world is simply not wired that way.

“If you see people three blocks up falling over and vomiting, it’s time to wear it,” said Victor Utgoff, a defense analyst for a firm in the Washington, D.C., area. “But what are people going to do? Carry them around? Watch the skies for crop dusters?”

Gas-mask purveyors, once on the economic fringe, now find themselves in the middle of a consumer maelstrom. And many of them don’t even understand how to use the masks they market. For Americans scrounging for accurate information in a once arcane market, the bad news is Consumer Reports is not going to help you on this one.

John Edell, owner and manager of The Surplus Store on Venice Boulevard in Culver City, said he cannot keep masks in stock. He has almost tripled the prices of masks since the Sept. 11 attack--to $49.95--but sales show no signs of abating. He got several hundred masks on Friday, and was sold out by Sunday.

Edell and his staff explain to customers that the masks are surplus for a reason. They may not work. Undeterred, buyers keep forking over their cash. “We’d say, ‘What are you using it for?” They’d say, ‘Anthrax.’ We’d say, ‘It won’t work for Anthrax. You need a suit.’ And they’d buy it anyway. It’s nuts. People are coming in saying, ‘Do you have one that would fit a dog?”’

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Gas masks were invented during World War I by the Germans, who also first used the gas they were designed to protect against.

In 1915, German troops discharged 168 tons of noxious chlorine gas into Allied trenches in Ypres, Belgium. Fifteen thousand Allied soldiers died.

Initially helpless against the gases, British troops effectively cobbled together masks of linen soaked in chemicals, or in a squeeze, their own urine, according to Anni Baker, a military historian at Wheaton College in Massachusetts.

Within a week of the first gas attacks, Brits had managed to manufacture crude masks with respirators, modeled on captured masks of German design. Within 10 weeks they had manufactured 21/2 million respirators, and issued them.

By 1925, the Geneva Convention banned the use of gas warfare.

But H.G. Wells stirred fears of chemical warfare in his prophetic 1933 novel “The Shape of Things to Come.” In the novel, a brotherhood of airmen keeps the peace by threatening to use gas. “The image of strategic bombers dropping gas had a lot of influence over the popular imagination in the inter-war period,” said Utgoff.

In 1944, when they stormed the Normandy beaches on D-Day, American soldiers carried gas masks. But in battle, infantry tends to discard equipment that is not immediately useful, and during World War II gas masks were notorious for being the first thing scrapped by troops, said University of North Carolina history professor Stephen Biddle, who specializes in military strategy.

Early in the war, he said, Britain required its civilian population to carry gas masks in canvas sacks. People who refused to carry them risked police attention, said Utgoff. “Bobbies could stop you, and give you trouble.” But as the war wore on, and the threat of chemical weapons grew more remote, people became less rigorous, carrying lunch in their canvas pouches, rather than gas masks.

Twenty-two years later, during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Israelis captured a Russian armored tank designed for a chemical warfare environment. “Everyone said, ‘If that is what the Russians intend, we must prepare,”’ Utgoff said. Chemical warfare blossomed as a threat. New gas masks were designed.

In 1994, Indians in the southern state of Gujarat went into a frenzy for gas masks after dozens of people died, reportedly as a result of an airborne strain of bubonic plague. “The poor, using handkerchiefs bandit-style, are crammed inside and on top of careening buses,” went one newspaper report. “Others flee on camel carts, while richer Indians zoom by them in cars, entire families wearing gas masks or surgical masks.”

Although there have been no confirmed reports of chemical weapons used against U.S. forces since World War I, U.S. troops carry gas masks in situations where nuclear, biological or chemical warfare could be used. Gas masks were available during the Korean War and the Vietnam War, said Conrad Crane, a Korean war vet and professor of military strategy at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania, but were not issued in most cases.

Maj. Cynthia Colin, a Defense Department spokeswoman who specializes in chemical and biological warfare issues, said all combat troops carry gas masks. They carried masks in both Bosnia and the Persian Gulf War, where some soldiers reportedly wore them for days.

Soldiers generally undergo training in which real nerve agents are released, in order to give them confidence in their equipment.

Still, the military has been plagued with gas mask problems. According to a 1999 Pentagon report, investigators surveyed more than 19,000 protective masks used by Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine units around the world, and found that more than half suffered from “critical” defects.

Even if the equipment is in perfect shape, a lack of training, particularly among civilians, can be perilous.

During the 1991 Persian Gulf War and in the wake of 39 missile attacks, 13 people died of suffocation due to the mishandling of masks’ protective devices. Most were elderly Israelis, who failed to remove a cap on the breathing cannisters of their gas masks during an Iraqi missile attack. A 3-year-old also died.

One enduring image from that time leaps to mind: To calm his jittery audience as air raid sirens wailed in Jerusalem, violinist Isaac Stern kept playing as many donned gas masks.

Some experts, like Jade Edwards, founder and director of the American School of Defense, believe every American should carry a gas mask and know how to use it. Edwards, who says he is a certified nuclear biological warfare (N.B.C.) instructor, and 1988 graduate of the United States Army Chemical School, founded his school for “N.B.C. and Survivalists” in 1998. The school sells equipment and offers classes to “everyone except terrorists” at a site near Kansas City, Mo. (Classes are sold out for the next two years, he said.)

“A lot of people want you to think that gas masks are useless, but that is not true,” said Edwards. “That is where education is important. It takes the fear factor away. Civilians need a lot of help. They need to know how to use it, and when to take it on or off.”

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If you do buy a gas mask, say the experts, it’s important to recognize it is only a temporary solution. The mask is meant to be used only for as long as it takes you to get out of the area. Older masks are less effective than new ones. Filters determine which biological or chemical agents get through. But to be fully protected against many agents, a mask would have to be used with a body suit.

Not only that, the masks are extremely uncomfortable. They make it hard to see, breathe and talk. People prone to claustrophobia may find themselves in trouble. A soldier’s fighting capacity, according to some experts, is impaired by up to 50% when a full N.B.C. suit is worn.

“The most annoying thing is, it’s hot,” said Bart Wilkus, a Chicago computer technician who has collected more than 300 masks. “Rubber doesn’t breathe. You start to sweat, and it pools down at the bottom.”

Experts agree the best gas mask on the market is the M-95 from Finland, which costs about $250. It’s lightweight, comfortable and can be fitted with optical inserts for people who wear glasses.

Israeli masks, which are most widely available, are not such a great buy, say those in the know.

“Before this whole thing people weren’t even buying Israeli civilian masks,” said Wilkus. “They fog up when you put them on. You can’t drink from them. Hair gets caught in the head harness. They didn’t use them, so they sent massive quantities of surplus over here.”

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Gas masks or not, many officials believe that the nation’s public health infrastructure is simply not equipped to deal with a chemical or biological attack on civilians. On Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson testified before a Senate subcommittee investigating bio-terrorism that the federal government has allocated $10 million to 25 cities to improve the ability of the public health system to respond to such threats. He also testified that production of a new smallpox vaccine has been accelerated, and that state and local health departments remain on alert for any unusual illnesses, he said.

“As a nation, we must deal with this sensitive issue in a rational manner,” said Thompson. “People should not be scared into believing they need gas masks.”

Tony Greenbank, author of “The Book of Survival: The Original Guide to Staying Alive in the City, the Suburbs and the Wild Lands Beyond,” wrote about how to evade a bull, how to vault onto an oncoming car before it knocks you down, and even how to deal with a hijacker. But in his 257-page book, he does not mention gas masks even once. “I slipped up,” the 67-year-old mountain climber said from his home in England. “But if I had included gas masks, they would have gotten low priority.”

He said the best thing to do in case of biological or chemical attack would be to follow the instructions for a nuclear attack: Seal up your house. Seal all the cracks. Make yourself a “nuclear core,” maybe under the stairs, and stock it with food and water. And just stay there until you hear on radio that it’s safe to go out.