Israeli here, we spent large portions (basically every night there was an alarm due to Iraqi missiles heading toward Israel) of the first Gulf War in specially prepared room(masking tape on the windows, wet towel under the door) wearing gas masks. Children and babies had more elborate solutions to "protect" us.

In the Iraq War we were handed out gas masks again, no alarms that time though.

I still have(probably expired by now) gas mask somewhere.

Shalom. The mask itself would not be expired, but the filters would be. The mask itself is only subject to dry rot unless it's stored in it's bag out in the elements. If you have it in a trunk or a closet, it's likely still good. You can order filters online.

The Israeli army is responsible for the civilian gas kits (they also include Atropine shots), and they're calling people to replace their masks every few years. If the parent commenter still has a mask, it's almost certainly not the one from '91.

Same here. And I have new gas masks from 4-5 years ago for my family in the closet. The gulf war was some crazy time. I was in high school back then, and we helped the army hand the masks to people before the war.

It didn't seem like something that we'd actually use before the war had started, but when that first siren sounded, man that was some scary shit.

I still remember TV news about the Gulf War. I was a 6 year old kid (in Germany) and still remember being horrified by the news that people have to use gas masks and that an elderly woman died because she did not remove tape (or something) from the filter and suffocated.

Yes, most fatalities in Israel were people suffocating by not removing the sealing cap off their gas masks (and probably attributing their suffocation to being gassed, thus not removing the mask), or heart attacks. 95 people died from such causes, and only 3 people as a direct result of the missiles.

Which BTW is pretty crazy considering the amount of damage they did - but most people living in the Tel Aviv area simply left home for a few weeks.

My family lived in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War. It wasn't a war zone, but we were still given gas masks by our company. I had a hooded gas mask because I was too young to wear a regular one.

N95 dust masks are an inescapable part of my life in Kaohsiung.

http://aqicn.org/map/kaohsiung-city/

The industrial air pollution was bad in Dongguan, but the regular burning of trash every evening (~6 - 7pm) really drove the point home. There is no experience quite like inhaling burning plastic fumes when the inflammation in your nasal passages is already dialed up to eleven.

Oh lord. China looks like a hell hole on that map :/

Those numbers can brutally spike too, more than doubling even for the high numbers; it’s basically like huffing hot soup through a car muffler.

Damn! Where I live it's 8 and even here the people are complaning if it goes up to 10 or something.