Old, pre 1940 first aid kits; possible lurking danger.

[skeptic]

This just came up on Talk About Scouting on FB.  Few will have this concern, but there are a lot of collectors and older troops may simply have old first aid kits hanging around.  Take a look.  Better safe than sorry.

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NOTE: Since today’s Girl Scout memorabilia post is about first aid kits, we thought it might be a good time to repeat this special notice…

Got picric acid? You might!

First aid kits made in the 1930s and 1940s by Johnson & Johnson (including Girl Scout kits) often included gauze pads soaked in picric acid, which was a very effective burn ointment. The problem is that as picric acid ages it crystallizes and becomes an explosive.

A few years ago, after being warned by a museum curators organization about the picric acid hazard, we discovered a few pads in first aid kits in our collection. We talked with our fire department and they sent out the Denver bomb squad. Our pads were carefully removed and taken to Denver International Airport, where they were detonated at the farthest end of the longest runway.

A collector in California laughed that we thought a 3” gauze pad was dangerous. But eventually she contacted her local fire department, who immediately evacuated her neighborhood and detonated two pads in a pit in her back yard — and that blew a hole in her cinderblock wall. After that she was a little mad at us, but didn’t laugh.

If you discover that your old first aid kit has picric acid gauze pads, immediately contact your local fire department and ask what they think should be done. We’ve given this advice to dozens of people across the country (including many eBay sellers), and their fire departments have always taken the picric threat seriously; we hope you will, too"

[MattR]

I'm sorry, but that was hilarious.

Though I will be on the lookout for really old first aid kits

[skeptic]

going through some old ones from our past we found a number of way past use items, and at least one or two that no longer are even legal.  Tiny tubes and bottles that needed special handling and disposal.  But we did not review the tape and pads at the time, so we need to find where the old things are, as our rooms are being worked on by he church and stuff went into hiding for a bit.  Likely do not have any, but who knows?  We had two of the old snke bite kits hanging about.