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
Another source of medical professionals recommending against it
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.
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.
Vodka it is, then
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.
Oh I thought yeast was a bacteria, huh.
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
Not really, no. It was more a tongue-in-cheek comment than an actual suggestion.
If you want ethanol then vodka would be better than beer as it has fewer other components
Yeah, and if you’re into the pain it will cause, you can try moonshine
Best practice is to use saline and a clean cloth to clean spray off with mechanical force