BEM 4GP Gas Mask test

Hello everyone, today we're going to be testing a very sort of interesting and weird gas mask but I'm sort of a fan of it. It's the Belgian BEM4GP and the GP part of it stands for General Purpose Respirator. Now this is an oddity of a mask because it was introduced in the 90s, they basically designed and started making their own mask and then within a few years they decided they didn't want it and they bought a load of Avon FM12s I believe it was. Maybe there was a bit of bribery somewhere who knows maybe Avon just made them a really good deal and undercut the price of these who knows but basically for ages Belgium used the French M51 gas mask which was fine in the 50s but was very outdated by that point. Funnily enough you can see pictures of French soldiers wearing the M51 in Desert Storm and so that's the Gulf War to the Americans and with the sort of M51 at that point they were still really old production M51s that you know were probably leaking because I've seen surplus M51s where the rubber's completely falling apart on them and you know if this picture is brilliant if you search French soldiers Gulf War or French soldiers Desert Storm you'll find this picture where they're in the old rubber NDC suits and they have mismatching filters and some of the filters look like they're rusty filters from the I really I feel sorry for the soldiers but you know if they were gas they'd have died no there's no escaping that but regardless the Belgians decided they didn't want that shitty old mask anymore and they wanted a new cool mask so they had the BEM4GP invented and this is kind of a bit of a groundbreaking mask at the time because it was made in the early 90s and it's got a visor on it it's not actually got the two sort of lenses like most masks at the time and the mask that would replace it it had a visor before everybody else did it as far as most of us are aware some industrial masks had visors beforehand but not on military masks but this mask has one very cool feature you can twist the filter to left bottom or right so however you shoot your rifle you can accommodate it which is a really clever idea so if you're a left-handed shooter you can have the filter on the right if you're a right-handed shooter you can have the filter on the left and if you're using it with some sort of right helmet and want the filter vertically down you can do that as well or you know using it with a hose assembly you can put the filter down now some people have said these masks leak and that's why you know didn't work properly had dodgy seals that's why they were replaced in service however i've seen no evidence of any documentation saying that so was that a rumor made up i don't know but what we're going to do is test it now i used this filter a couple of weeks ago when i tested my m65 and it worked so as far as i'm concerned because we're only blocking aerosols you only need the basic particulate filter that filter should still work so we're gonna try gassing it with the filter in several positions and see if it works so here we go so here i am with the mask on uh if that looks slightly sort of blurry on there that's just where it's got dusty where i've had it on the shelf for ages so filter check mask pressurizes it work mask is sealed properly excellent so yeah you do get good very all-around vision with here blind spots here but peripheral vision is actually pretty good with this kind of thing on um yeah a bit of you can't directly up but yeah you get good vision i still prefer the two round sort of things closer to your eyes but uh it doesn't fit with my current glasses but i imagine you could wear some spectacles under this without much issue so you've got a lot of space between your eye and that for that there so um it's five point head up sorry six point head harness two straps here two straps here letting you get a good fit so i'm gonna do see if the seals work on this one all right we'll start timing that in a moment so far i can't smell a thing so this is 11 38 now so i'm going to give it a couple of minutes and then we'll see how well it works so thank you to whoever it was in the comments who said could i test this mask because i haven't done a video on it i thought that's a good idea because you know this is an interesting mask and i have recommended this before for people wanting a decent surplus mask because these are you know you can get these that are made in the mid 90s so in theory they're just coming to their end of their 20 year shelf life but they're a very good condition mask especially if you want it against tear gas or something so what we're going to do is rotate that still can't smell anything rotate it again can't smell anything rotate again can't smell anything so as you can see if i was shooting a rifle i'd have it like this because i'm right-handed the filter assembly is like on a normal mask you've got the filter to the side but you can have it in any position you want from what i've read there's this is only one of two masks that did this the other one was an italian mask i believe i think it's called something like the super 51 but i haven't really seen pictures of it so i can't comment but i think that's a pretty cool idea they did you know having this filter design where you can only um you know you can twist it however you want it's a shame more masks didn't do that but that's where i've heard rumors that these masks leaked was the swivel bit for the filter caused problems but yeah now the mask is working perfectly fine i can't smell a thing um and i said you know really i should be doing this test with a new filter and funnily enough i have found um on amazon you can buy particulate filters and brand new ones for about five pounds so i've ordered one of those that'll come soon i also have two new masks coming that'll be very interesting one of them is an old asbestos one so i can't wear it and it'll be interesting to look at and the other one is not even a surplus one from my understanding of where i ordered it it's a brand new mask so i only paid about 60 pounds for it so if it's good condition if it's a good mask i'm going to recommend that for people wanting to prep a mask you know because it's within its 10 year shelf life easily so but anyway back to this video yeah the mask works ah but if i do this it has the same problem the uh german m65 has where the chin seal isn't very good it's not much of a problem but obviously in a gas environment you would not want that uh that is not a problem i've ever had with the avon s10 or fm12 type masks they have very good all-around face seals the other side of this mask does look quite a bit like the drager m65 it's got the same sort of chin section and nose section but obviously this is a much better mask than the m51 they replaced uh the french amp m51 but yeah most of the allegations around this mask as far as i can tell from this one example are pretty unfounded the mask works perfectly fine the you know modify the filter position is a very good idea you get very clear vision and it's a really interesting mask you can still find these on ebay i got mine from an army surplus around 30 to 40 pounds but on ebay they are 30 to 40 pounds with the carry bag for them as well which i didn't get because a lot of army surplus stores are really cheap where they take everything apart and sell the bag separately for about the same price as the gas mask so um yeah so but yeah to get on subjects the bm4gp definitely works i wonder if it's in this position yeah you can still breathe so you can even breathe when it's not locked into a position but yeah the mask works now for the i'm dreading yeah the mask works let's leave it at that