I have an Iver Films cut down (2 x 400ft) on Kodak SP of THE DIAMOND MERCENARIES. Its in its original clamshell boxes and has the best colour of any Kodak SP film I have seen, with no fade. Unfortunately, it has the strongest smell of any of my films, a sort of acidic smell.

How do I know if it has got VS? I keep it well away from my other films, and I have had the cases open but the film still has a stronger smell than my other films. I bought it last year for £10 so no big deal, but it would be shame if I had to get rid of it because the condition is so good. Any thoughts? Are there any other tests for VS other than the smell. It's the only film I have like this.

John ,for my money the best test for VS is your nose,if the film smells you most probably got vinegar syndrome and there's not much you can do about it.
If you look around the various sites there are some who will soak the film in film cleaners,some don't seem to mind having VS prints,but it is contagious and will contaminate other films.Sometimes the prints warp and start to disintegrate.
I have a mint scope print 16mm of Paint You Wagon which has VS.I keep it stored away from all my other films and show it on a spare old machine that's not used for anything decent.I fear that it will soon be time to dump it,but I do like musicals.
I would not buy a VS film by choice.📽😀

John, pm me your mailing address and I'll mail you some A-D strips along with instructions on how to use and read the results. Only way to know for sure.

I once bought a film that smelled a lot of vinegar when I opened the box. It had been wrapped in plastic. My wife asked me why it smelled vinegar in the entire apartment :-) But after a few weeks it didn't smell much at all after being stored in an open box with no plastic around. Now I can't notice a difference between this film and other films. I store it in a separate card board box away from the other films, but I use the same projector as for other things.

I heard at my club that films with vinegar can't infect other films, but it can make other films that has started to get vinegar to progress much faster. I have heard many different things around when it comes to vinegar. I have settled with storing it separately but keep using the same projector.

I found a quite interesting article from the Image Preservation Institute talking about how to preserve a film collection with acetate film.
https://www.imagepermanenceinstitute.org/webfm_send/299

They mention Vinegar too. Conserning this topic, I found this to quite interesting:

Zitat

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One of the primary strategies for dealing with nitrate
film in collections has been to segregate it from the
other film materials. This has been done for two
reasons: because of the potential fire hazard21 and
because the acidic and oxidizing fumes from degrading
nitrate film may infect other, still healthy, films.17 Does
this make sense to do with degrading acetate? The
available evidence on this point is limited. While in
some circumstances deterioration appears to have
spread from film to film, one cannot be sure of the
extent to which absorption of acid vapors helped to
trigger the degradation.

Laboratory experiments show that acetic acid
vapors are readily absorbed by fresh film, and this will
lead to faster deterioration. In practice, however, it’s
quite difficult to judge when a threat actually exists.
Where at all practical, films showing vinegar syndrome
should be segregated. However, this is not always
possible, and having a little degraded acetate film in a
large, well-ventilated room may not infect other
materials. In such cases the measurable acetic acid
concentration in the room may be very low. On the
other hand, having some strong-smelling film inside a
closed container with good film will likely cause faster
deterioration in the good film, because the concentration
inside the box can be rather high. More research is
needed to explore the practical aspects of this phenomenon,
but until then, film archivists will have to use
their own best judgment about when and how degrading
acetate film should be segregated from the rest of a
collection.

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I don't have time now to read it all (having just a short lunch break at work), but I will read it all when I have time.

vinegar is all right on chips