I have often said, "Hey, I'm not as dumb as I look". Saturday afternoon I proved that statement wrong.
I had a can of Counter Assault bear spray that was about 20 years old, and I figured it was probably no good anymore. I have a couple others that I have fed into the supply since then, so I thought I'd just use it for practice and shoot it off in the back yard. My backyard is about twenty acres of woodlands with the closest other house about 200 feet away, and they weren't home.
So…I shot it off in short bursts, until it was empty. It comes out in an orange fog, not a stream like human-type pepper spray. I couldn’t smell it at all, so I figured it had gone bad in the can. Good to know. (But oooohhhhh so wrong!!)
I went back down in the basement to work on the cleanup project and a couple of minutes later my throat was getting tingly and I started to cough. Suddenly I was having real trouble breathing. The stuff was coming in through the foundation vents! I went outside and took a good breath, and almost went down. This stuff was not in any way diminished by 20 years in the can.
I remembered the bedroom window was open, and my cats upstairs in the house. I ran up and shut the window. I could smell it in the house a little. I grabbed the cats and stuffed them into their transport crates and got in the truck and drove about a mile away to the vacant lot across from the fire station (in case I got worse and couldn’t breathe.) We sat there for about a half hour until the cats got fidgety and I went back home. I could still smell the bear spray a little but it had mostly dispersed by then.
BUT….my throat still burned and my lungs hurt a little all day Sunday and Monday. It wasn't until Tuesday afternoon that I started feeling normal again. It never did make my eyes burn, which I guess is OK considering.
Lesson learned: If you have to get rid of old bear spray, obey your local laws and regulations regarding that, and do it safely. If you have to use it for defense, shoot it and run away before YOU get overcome.