The review is devoted to non-woven sorption-filtering materials (NSFM) widely used equipment for gas cleaning from toxic gaseous and vaporous substances. The use of ion-exchange fibrous materials (IFM) as NSFM and the peculiarities of their preparation and structure have been analyzed. A lot of attention is paid to the mechanisms of chemisorption processes using IFM and to the role of water in their successful implementation. Individual options and some regularities of fibrous anionites, cationites, and polyampholytes interaction due to exchange reactions, neutralization, reduction-oxidation, complexation and precipitation with gaseous and vaporous substances are considered on specific examples.