The point isn’t that liquids are explosive, the point is that water messes up the explosives detection. It’s “liquids are not allowed, because water is a false positive for explosives and we want to avoid the false positive”.
That’s why it’s starting to get allowed in many airports - they updated their detectors to newer technology where water is no longer a false positive.
That makes sense and would almost reassure me if they didn’t have a 95% failure rate in tests. The data is super old but I can’t find anything to suggest it’s improved since then.
According to several TSA agents in my travels to and around the US, at least, when I asked why my water had to be discarded, they all said variations of the same thing, “it could be an explosive”. And the news broadcasts I’ve seen when this measure was first implemented were telling people that these “new types of explosives” look like water and are hidden inside water bottles, and the water can even be sipped on without harm to the person from the heavier-than-water liquid explosive. So, while it may have been a lie, it was one that approved the measures. “False positives” were never communicated.
The point isn’t that liquids are explosive, the point is that water messes up the explosives detection. It’s “liquids are not allowed, because water is a false positive for explosives and we want to avoid the false positive”.
That’s why it’s starting to get allowed in many airports - they updated their detectors to newer technology where water is no longer a false positive.
Nobody thinks your bottle of water is a bomb.
That makes sense and would almost reassure me if they didn’t have a 95% failure rate in tests. The data is super old but I can’t find anything to suggest it’s improved since then.
According to several TSA agents in my travels to and around the US, at least, when I asked why my water had to be discarded, they all said variations of the same thing, “it could be an explosive”. And the news broadcasts I’ve seen when this measure was first implemented were telling people that these “new types of explosives” look like water and are hidden inside water bottles, and the water can even be sipped on without harm to the person from the heavier-than-water liquid explosive. So, while it may have been a lie, it was one that approved the measures. “False positives” were never communicated.