From the Ecology Center in Michigan comes a whole new way to create Top Ten Lists: simply measure, and rank the potential for harm of, chemical compounds in automotive interiors. It’s hard to say how impartial or respectable they are — nota bene that one of their board members is a current Ford employee — but their lists of best and worst automotive interiors should be of interest to anyone who wonders what, exactly, the “new car smell” is. It also offers a potential answer to a question which has flummoxed TTAC readers for some time now…
According to the EcoCenter folks,
Over 200 of the most popular 2011- and 2012-model vehicles were tested for chemicals that off-gas from parts such as the steering wheel, dashboard, armrests and seats. These chemicals contribute to “new car smell” and a variety of acute and long-term health concerns. Since the average American spends more than 1.5 hours in a car every day, toxic chemical exposure inside vehicles can be a major source of indoor air pollution…
Chemicals of primary concern include: bromine (associated with brominated flame retardants); chlorine (indicating the presence of polyvinyl chloride, or PVC and plasticizers); lead; and heavy metals. Such chemicals have been linked to a wide range of health problems such as allergies, birth defects, impaired learning, liver toxicity, and cancer. Automobiles are particularly harsh environments for plastics, as extreme air temperatures of 192 F and dash temperatures up to 248 F can increase the concentration of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC’s) and break other chemicals down into more toxic substances.
TTACers with finely-honed automotive stereotype sensors will note that the Top Ten List is entirely German and Japanese, while the worst olfactory offenders seem to hail from Hyundai/Kia, Daewoo, and Japan’s second tier of manufacturers. The Audi/VW conglomerate places one contender each in the halls of fame and shame.
Parents visiting the Healthystuff.org website will be dismayed to find that the Britax Marathon car seat, revered among sports-car dads as about the only kid seat that fits in the back of a 911 (and, indeed, is sold under the Porsche label for a ridiuclously inflated price) makes it to the list of the three most dangerously chemical-laden child carriers. Boo hiss. Bad enough I’m exposing my kid to high speeds in an aircooled relic; worse yet to poison him along the way.
For adults, on the other hand, it’s hard to make the argument that buying a new car, even an Outlander Sport, will set you on the highway to the proverbial danger zone. Surely new-car smell isn’t that dangerous. If it were, autojournalists, who have new car smell 52 weeks a year, would become Faulknerian idiots, babbling about hotels, brown cars, and free station wagons on Facebook.
Oh. Wait.
This, honestly, might explain the Scott Burgess Chrysler Sebring/200 Hate Gap, which has long puzzled students of automotive journalism. Could it be that Mr. Burgess was sound of mind and body when rolling in the convertible Sebring, with the wind in his hair whisking the dashboard poisons away, but once locked in the sulfurous interior of the 200 sedan, he was driven quite mad by the stench? We may never know.
Your humble author is also reconsidering his praises of the 2012 Kia Soul. Perhaps I was poisoned on the hoof, driven mad as a hatter while operating the thing. Or would that be mad as a hamster?
So… Drive your new Mitsubishi, 200 or Soul with the windows open for the first 5,000 miles?
This doesnt concern me. Every day they tell us the next thing that’s going to kill us. It’s a miracle any of us last past 25.
Strange.. the Cube & Versa come from the same production. I’d feel more at risk from inhaling diesel fumes or other ol’ smokies up front. Or same, riding my bicycle and inhaling deep.
The Cube is made in Japan and the Versa is made in Mexico, and have completely different interior trim, even though they share a base platform, along with the Juke and various Renaults and Dacias.
Riding the bike and inhaling, if in an urban area, has to be the worst. I laugh at people jogging through areas clogged with diesel trucks.
I always run on recirculate in traffic to not inhale the diesel fumes and asbestos brake pads.
Yeah, this is just a lot of noise. “have been linked to” indeed…by whom, in what manner, for what reason. The odds are very good here, and anyplace else where you read “have been linked to” that you’re looking at junk science.
Another useless data to get more traffic to healthystuff web site.
i can confirm from brief ownership of a 2010 kia soul, it smelled downright awful.
Where are the units of whats being measured here? Is it olfactory/mL, ppm, bananas/kilo miles???
Every time I see anything with units missing I immediately discount it as a made up number.
If you dig deep on healthy stuff.org, they give you the ppm concentration figures, but yeah, the press release is a composite score, which is usually open to interpretation depending on what you decide to weight in the composite.
Where’s GM on the list? Aveo is Korean. Isn’t GM still trying to kill their customers? (Brake pads, steering wheels, fires, Vega.) Just wondering if GM is losing their touch.
So.. toxic chemicals, or the stuff Top Gear found in their used cars. Your choice.
So — solid metal dashboards are safer? Or good old wooden dashboards (held together with formaldehyde glue)? Maybe a wooden dash with sharp metal objects staked into it?
Seriously, as someone with 25 years in the plastics business (manufacturing), any resins going into automotive applications are considered specialty materials and held to a much higher quality level. (Grocery bags and such are your commodities resins). We have very strict standards as to how much volatile organics can be contained in the final product (and ultimately released, over the next several decades).
While there is some chemical smell associated with new plastics, it’s hardly more harmful than what’s coming out of the tailpipe of the car in front of you (and likely straight into you AC duct).
As a side note, I had a door-to-door salesman try to sale me some new liquid cleaner the other day. His sales pitch? 100% guaranteed chemical free cleaner. I asked if it had any H2O in it – “No sir, no chemicals whatsoever, completely safe!”
There seems to be this irrational fear of chemicals no matter what the truth.
+1. For context, I’d also like to see a trend line for these toxins over the years. Today’s Mitsubishi is likely much ‘safer’ than yesterday’s Ford Fairmont.
Likely true. But I suspect a lack of directly comparable historical data would make such a comparo impossible; things like this were not so much on the radar screen in 1978.
I need a cigarette.
LOL, that does put this in perspective. :-)
Ha! With electrics, hybrids, pzev and ultra-lev engines, cars are becoming cleaner on the outside than the inside.
I don’t see an immediate threat to adults, but who knows about long term exposure, especially to children? Awareness is a good thing, and this is another area for auto manufacturers to compete on.
Selling Mitsubishi cars could be hazardous to your health.
Yesterday we read that the much maligned 2012 Civic gets better hwy mpg’s than the EPA numbers, today we read that while you get those additional miles out of your expensive gas, you’re also less likely to die from toxic smells,jeez looks like the Civic ain’t that bad after all. On the positive side, Mitsu sells so few that a tiny portion of the population is at risk.
I`ve said it before, I`ll say it again. Honda has a knack for doing the right thing sooner than everybody else and then not getting credit for it. It must drive their marketing managers crazy.
Yesterday, in Sydney, the Managing Director of Nissan/Infiniti Australia announced that there would be eight new models this year from the Leaf to the Patrol and that his first target is to overtake Mitsubishi. Maybe these toxic numbers will appear in his marketing.
My generation was brought up with no kid seats, the four boys playing in the back of the station wagon all the way to Amarillo, no seat belts, ethyl gasoline, everybody smoking cigarettes in the car, and open containers. Not to mention the lead paint. I love new car smell on matter what the toxins. Hell, we were raised on toxins.
Hahaha… Quite fitting that it’s Jack writing this otherwise humdrum piece… Injects a little life into an otherwise boring article.
Given the primarily hard finishes covering large swathes of dashboard without break in the Prius and Civic, it’s not surprising where they are on the list. Want good looking, good feeling and soft plastics? You get as far down on the list as the MINI.
The Soul is a real surprise. Who would have thought essentially Fisher Price plastics would outgas so much? Maybe if they didn’t paint interior panels in body-colour paint, it wouldn’t be so bad.
Whenever someone told my dad something was ‘good’ or ‘bad’, he’d always ask, “compared to what?” Many of the smells in a new car match the smells in a newly painted, refurnished room at home. Why, I once wore new Levi’s while riding in my cousin’s Levi’s-upholstered Gremlin! Now, if the research concluded that the VOCs from my dashboard and the outgassing from my Herculon sofa can combine to create a lethal cocktail of chemicals, well, that’s news I can use.
AFAIC, all this means is that your climate control system should always be set to admit outside air, using at least a low fan speed. You don’t want to know the rate of cabin air replacment (with outside air) on a passenger jet . . . and there are a lot more than VOCs riding along inside.