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UK: CS spray "too toxic to be safe"

01 January 1999

A secret Home Office commissioned review of CS gas, "Literature review of solvents suitable for the police CS spray", dating from 1997, says that police sprays contain "a solvent which experts consider too toxic to be safe" according to an article in Police Review. The report, which was compiled at Porton Down, rules out the use of methyl isobutyl ketone (MIKB) the solvent used in the police sprays, as "too dangerously toxic". An earlier report compiled at Porton Down in 1996 also warned against using MIKB as a solvent in CS spray. The report considered 16 solvents which could have been used in the spray and MIKB was graded 3/4 (serious) in ascending order of toxicity; this automatically meant that it was unsafe to use. A Home Office spokesman told Police Review that the department was aware of the report but believed that CS spray did not pose any risk. However, it is understood that there are plans to replace police CS sprays with one of the variants of the equally unpredictable pepper sprays in the future.

Preliminary results from a Police Complaints Authority (PCA) survey into the use of CS spray show that "half the people who complained about being sprayed...were in police custody or care" at the time. The survey, which looked at all complaints about the use of CS in the six months since October, included five incidents in which CS was sprayed from within a metre of the complainants face. One man complained of being handcuffed at the time, (in March 1996 Ibrahima Sey died after being handcuffed and sprayed by police officers at Ilford police station). Commenting on the results to Police Review PCA chairman, Peter Moorehouse, expressed concern at the number of incidents where spray had been used in an enclosed space. Nonetheless, he qualified his remarks by saying, "it's not always inappropriate to use it inside" and added, "once you have somebody handcuffed you couldn't say you should never use it because they could be kicking or lashing out".

Police Review 5.2.99.