Danger, Will Robinson! Latest New-Car-Smell-Is-Bad Study Says It’s Worse in the Summer

Remember when a “new car smell” was a good thing?

Yes, that’s been a while. That smell, we’ve learned, is a combination of about 50 volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from upholstery, paint, cleaning products, glue, carpet, and a bunch of other sources. In a pioneering study by the Scientific Instrument Services that was completed in 1999, we were told that, “Potential health risks exist due to the toxic nature of many of these components.”

That particular study used the “Scientific Instrument Services model TD-3 Short Path Thermal Desorption System accessory connected to the injection port of an HP 5890 Series II GC interfaced to an HP 5971 Mass Selective Detector.” After the samples were taken from a Lincoln Continental, they were “purged with helium at 50 ml/min for 8 minutes and then spiked with 100 ng of d-14 cymene internal standard by injecting 1 ul of a 100 ng/l of a d-14 cymene stock solution in methanol by syringe injection into the Tenax matrix.”

In other words, don’t try this at home.

Anyway, that study was one of the earlier ones that insisted that the new car smell was bad for us. Since then, we’ve been barraged by multiple studies on the subject, some of which have suggested that we should drive our new cars with the windows down.

And now comes a new one that says not only is the new car smell bad for you, it’s especially troublesome during the summer months, of which we are, of course, right in the middle. The study appears in the July issue of Oxford Academic’s PNAS Nexus, and says that, “Material surface temperature crucially influences the in-cabin VOC emission characteristics, rather than air temperature. This particularly affects new vehicles in summer hot days, explaining the strong new car smell.”

This study was done in China by the Beijing Institute of Technology and Peking University. A great deal of the new car smell research in the past 25 years or so comes from China. Why? Because the Chinese people hate new car smell, and have long sought to eliminate it. An article published in 2018 in the journal Quartz reported that in the U.S., “You can buy fragrances that emulate the new-car smell. In China, such an idea would seem utterly absurd because consumers loathe that lingering scent.” The story said that Ford realized the issue early on and hired people with “golden noses” in China, “whose job is to sniff car parts, sending them back when their scent is deemed offensive.”

According to a Newsweek story on this new Chinese summer-is-bad study, “These volatile chemicals include toluene, used in paints, glues and nail polish removers; styrene, used in rubber, insulation and carpet backing; and formaldehyde, which is used in carpets, leather and vehicle paint. Previous research has shown that inhaling these chemicals can cause a range of health problems, from nausea and headaches to memory loss, hormonal disruption and cancer.”

While it’s well established that certain VOC odors technically can be bad for you, these studies are typically short on hard evidence of human damage quantifiably caused by new car smell. In a 2007 study undertaken by Germany’s Technical University of Munich, toxicologists researched new car smell and, according to an account of the study published that year in Live Science, “New car smell does not appear to be toxic, the scientists found. Air from the new car did cause a slight aggravation of the immune response that could affect people with allergies.”

Bottom line: Enjoy your new car smell while you can (unless you’re Chinese). It will be long, long gone before you make the last payment.