They were employed by all branches of the United States Armed Forces from 1928-1969 for the purpose of training in detection, handling and familiarization with chemical warfare.
[1] CAIS were used by all branches of the United States military for training in detection, handling and familiarization with chemical warfare agents between the 1930s and 1960s.
[2] These subsets included bottles of sulfur mustard used to purposely contaminate equipment or terrain for decontamination training.
[3] Another type of CAIS were known as "sniff sets" and were used to train soldiers to recognize the color and odor of chemical agents.
[1] The U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency was assigned the task of destroying CAIS as they were found, usually through ongoing construction projects.