Sometimes cars fail the sniff test.  Ours did.

A while back, in the middle of an extremely hot summer, we became aware of a very unpleasant smell in our car.  I cleaned out the interior and checked the front grill and the undercarriage for road kill, I still couldn’t find the source of the smell.

The smell got worse as the days passed, and we had to drive with the windows down wherever we went.  We avoided offering friends a ride.

At last I found the cause of the stink, a half-full plastic milk container from a McDonald’s Happy Meal pinched under the front seat.

Some smells in our cars, like this one, are simply unpleasant and bothersome.  Other odors may be dangerous to our health.

In the simply unpleasant category go smells from leftover Happy meals, from Rover, from the exercise gear in the gym bag in the rear seat, from perspiration, and from stuff brought in on our shoes, all more dangerous to our reputation and driving pleasure than to our health.  Messy cars like this one frequently have unpleasant interior air quality.

In the just as smelly unhealthy class are tobacco smoke, various pollutants, chemical air fresheners, and even that new car smell.

Johns Hopkins researchers measured and tested the air in smokers’ cars and found that the exposure to secondhand smoke lingers long after a cigarette has been extinguised.  Everyone who breathes secondhand smoke is endangering their health, especially young children whose lungs are smaller and more delicate.

That “new car smell” that many people find pleasant is the automotive aroma of fresh plastic, paint, acoustic insulation, wiring, glues, adhesives and sealers and upholstery.  What most people don’t realize is that the smell comes from levels of toxic chemicals 5 – 10 times higher than those in homes or offices.  Even older vehicles parked outside on very hot days off-gas some of these toxic smells.

The air flowing through the typical automobile interior is far from pure.  It can contain gas and diesel exhaust fumes, various particles, smog, dust, pollen, and germs.  You can add to that toxic vapors from the highway itself.  The EPA has identified 21 toxic chemicals in highway air.

Auto air quality is an important issue not just from the standpoint of driving pleasure but from a health perspective.  These days most people spend hours every day in their cars. 

Rolling down the windows or putting the vent fan on high is no longer a satisfactory solution to these problems except in the most pristine environment due to outside air quality.

Ultimately, the best solution may be to use a portable vehicle air purifier that removes odors, tobacco smoke, toxic chemicals and other pollutants from inside vehicle air while you’re driving.  The various models available include some designed for convenient temporary mounting which plug into a vehicle’s auxiliary power port.

These days we all carry a toxic load of chemicals that we’ve absorbed from the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink, and the products we use. So it’s also a good idea to periodically flush those toxins out through some method of detoxification.