When I lived in Salem, VA there was a Wendy’s restaurant that had a safe with a Badger Safe Protector in it. Some thieves set it off one night and the next day when the staff opened the restaurant they were met by the tear gas. The restaurant was closed for a few days while all the hard surfaces were washed down, and the carpet and ceiling tiles replaced because the gas in effect deposited itself on anything open to the air.
In that same time frame a friend who started working there who had collected around 12 of the vials heard about to potential for them to become explosive. He ended up calling the bomb disposal unit of the VA State Police. He said he was allowed to go with them to a police range where they were shot from a distance to destroy them and he told me and many others that they did in fact explode when shot and created a small crater where they had been mounted. He did state that the liquid in all of his vials had turned a dark brown.
From that accounting everyone presumed that there was some kind of accelerant also in the vials that was intended to propel the tear gas outside of the safe it was installed in. You are correct that a locksmith using professional techniques shouldn’t activate one of those things but they were designed to be deployed when physical attack was used and that is usually the method of thieves, or as they were called ‘Yegg men’.
Personally I would dispose of any such vials by calling the state bomb squad to take them away.
BBE.
