This is a solved problem and has been for years. The last time I went to Yellowstone we rented bear spray.
Related: don't heat peppers in your microwave.
More societal awareness of rare-im-nature combos of capsaicin, pressure,heat, please!
One of my favorite chili recipes suggests doing exactly this to toast them before turning them into a puree: https://www.seriouseats.com/pressure-cooker-chile-con-carne-...
The important part is that they're dried so there's not enough water to cause a steam-fueled capsaicin bomb in your microwave.
Is bear spray like mosquito spray.
No, bear spray is the same as pepper spray, except highly pressurized to shoot a longer distance (10m vs 2m). Bear spray has the same active ingredient as pepper spray (capsicum).
No, it's like a super pepper spray. You definitely don't want to spray it on yourself.
Bear spray works as well on humans as it does on bears.
If you spray it on yourself certainly bears won't be your biggest immediate problem ...
Yes
Ive bought it a few times. I just USPS ground it home to myself. There should be a donation bin at the airport and exit points.
Funny enough! There is a donation/disposal bin for bear-spray at BZN (the primary airport you fly to visit yellowstone).
Seems rather wasteful for tourists to buy a can of bear spray, carry it around for a week, then throw it away. But sad that coming up with some kind of system to hand it off to the next tourist is hard? Otherwise everyone would use the rentals and there wouldn’t be so many in the trash.
The rental cost is nearly the same cost as buying a can, or at least it was when I was there.
On a recent trip to Yellowstone and glacier, it was cheaper to buy a can than to use one of the local shops renting bear spray.
The funny part is, this problem has already been solved by the thru-hiking and backpacking community. We call them "hiker boxes". But for them to work, it requires an agreement within the community on some unspoken rules. Things like take only what you need, try to leave more than you take, and don't abuse the system or everybody loses. Hikers actually enjoy leaving things behind that they hope will solve some immediate need for someone else, even if they never get to meet that person.
Looking out for one another in ways like this is mostly just baked into the subculture and that's one reason hiker boxes work (the other being you just don't want to carry extra weight). As someone who has backpacked through Yellowstone, I'm not sure it would work for the tourist culture there.
It really shouldn't be hard. As you're walking out, just hand it to someone walking in. Even for our State Fair with the coupon racket that is used, I've been handed a string of tickets walking to the gate from someone that bought more than they could use. Funny timing though, I had already pre-purchased tickets that I didn't even use. On exiting, I gave away what I was given plus what I didn't use.
The fact that there's not a stand/bin with a "need one, take one" type of sign is kind of head scratcher