AGAINST POISON GAS

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 50, 22 November 1930, Page 29

AGAINST POISON GAS

Seeking Defensive Measures In a building less than six hundred yards from the House of Commons experts are engaged every day devising moans of protection against poison gas. Thev are members of the staff of a London firm of submarine engineers, and few among the tens of thousands of people who daily pass the firms premises in Westminster Bridge Road are aware of the unceasing fight against gas which is being waged there. New gas masks, are constantly being designed, and many of the rooms are reminiscent of a quartermaster’s store in France during the war. Masked men like robots disappear through a door. Five or ten minutes later they appear again removing their disfiguring face gear. They have just risked death in a chamber filled with carbon monoxide, mustard gas, or some other deadly vapour. Comfort is vital to the efficiency of a gas mask. This was realised during the war, when so many men fell victims to gas because they felt suffocated, and tore off their masks. That danger has now been eliminated. The new style of gas mask is, indeed, so comfortable that it is possible to wear it all day and even sleep in it without undue embarrassment. While these privately employed experts working in the shadow of the House of Commons are mainly concentrating on individual protection, the Government is fully alive to the importance of protecting the civilian population as a whole.