This Is Not A Chemical Weapon

While following Syria, there's one type of video that comes up again and again, regularly being misinterpreted as showing chemical weapons, the following videos being good examples

These types of items appear on a fairly regular basis, usually accompanied by a lot of questions asking if it's proof of chemical weapons.  These are parts of Soviet testing kits for various chemical agents, one of which is actually for sale on Ebay at the moment, which provides some useful photographs, including some of the items shown above

So next time you see a panic over these items on Facebook or Twitter, let them know if Ebay is happy to sell it, then it's probably not a chemical weapon.

Thanks to Dan Kaszeta for help with this post.  Further posts on chemical weapons can be found here.

You can contact the author on Twitter @brown_moses or by email at brownmoses@gmail.com