Everything But The Weed

Approved by:
Linda Maze, a Wedding photography Gainesville FL in Gainesville Florida

Does your ride have a certain air about it?  Ours did.

A while back, in the middle of an extremely hot summer, we detected 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 cause of the odor.

The smell increased as the days went by, and we had to drive with the windows down wherever we went.  We absolutely wouldn’t allow any of our friends to ride with us.

At last I discovered the source of the stink, a half-full plastic milk container from an old McDonald’s Happy Meal wedged under the front seat.

Some smells in our cars, like this one, are merely unpleasant and troublesome.  Other odors may be hazardous to our health.

In the merely unpleasant group go smells from leftover Happy meals, from Rover, from the exercise gear in the gym bag in the rear seat, from perspiration, and from crud carried 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.

Included in the equally 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 concluded that the exposure to secondhand smoke lingers long after the smoker has put out the smoke.  Everyone who breathes secondhand smoke is endangering their health, especially young children whose lungs are smaller and more delicate.

That “new car smell” that most 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.  On hot summer days even older vehicles parked outside off-gas some of these toxic smells.

The air that flows through the typical car interior is a long way from pure.  It can contain gas and diesel exhaust fumes, various particles, smog, dust, pollen, and germs.  Add to that toxic vapors that come from the highway itself.  The EPA has identified 21 toxic chemicals in highway air.

The quality of the car air 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 vehicles. 

Cranking up the vent fan and rolling down the windows is no longer a workable solution to these problems except in the most pristine environment due to outside air quality.

One potential solution is 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.  There are various types available, several designed for convenient temporary mounting that plug into a vehicle’s auxiliary power port.

There is a growing recognition by the general public of the toxins we absorb 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.