Originally Posted by etch5895
I also think that if you take a swig of the stuff and don't start doing the dying cockroach on the airport floor, that is a pretty good indicator that the liquid is safe. Chemists out there---are there any liquids that can be consumed and still be potentially hazardous?
I'm not a chemist, but the chemisty in my background says "no" to that. The false-bottom bottles were the way around that, or so we hear. The sorts of compounds needed to create an explosive are pretty nasty.
Take TATP, for instance, which due to the London subway bombings is often cited as the "binary" explosive of choice for would-be terrorists (despite the fact that it isn't binary in that you don't just mix two reasonably inert substances together to get an explosive--the mixing takes hours, not seconds, and despite the fact that its sensitivity is such that it's not well-suited to anything but blowing oneself up whilst making it).
With TATP, the ingredients are nearly-pure acetone and 30% or greater hydrogen peroxide, neither of which can be consumed at a checkpoint without an obvious reaction--immediate gagging, vomitting, possible chemical burns to the mouth, etc. MEKP, another peroxide explosive with a lower yield, would involve drinking methyl ethyl ketone or peroxide, again with similar results. Nitroglycerine would require drinking a toxic liquid (nitroglycerine itself), or acids that would immediately be apparent in their effect.
Of course, having someone drink the substance in question only works for beverages. A lot of us also would like to be able to carry small amounts of toiletries with us so we don't have to get them at the destination, check a bag, or ship them ahead.