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Well since we're doing smelly car stories - I was moving house once as a youngster, back in the days when I could fit my stuff in a few boot-loads of my VW polo. I packed the deep fat fryer forgetting it was full of used oil, and I put it on its side. When I found out I only noticed a small spillage and thought it had been empty, but the whole lot had run down past the boot lining and into the spare wheel well where it congealed. Car smelled of chips forever then. Funtimes.
Your liver is struggling. The liver removes toxins from the body, when you get into the new car you are overloading and so you get ill.
I would suggest you stop driving the new car if at all possible and do everything you can to help your liver. As to why it is struggling, that will be more difficult to ascertain. It could be some sort of underlying illness, e.g. long covid, rotten tooth, digestive issues etc etc. Or it could just be that you have reached the happy point in your life when the years of excess/neglect have caught up and you are now paying the price (some people call it old age).
Best things you can do to help your liver is resolve any underlying health issues (especially digestive ones), eat very well (I mean at least 5 portions of veg + fruit a day, 10 is a good target), regular cardio, remove enviromental toxins (including alcohol), a bit of intermittent fasting is good, along with regular full sleep of course. Supplements/herbs can help but you would need to seek expert advice there and it sounds as though you can probably reverse the problem with lifestyle changes, seeing as you say you have no other health major issues. Modern life is very hard on the body, you must look after it. Speaking from experience, when your liver starts to struggle you will find that more and more health problems will sneak up on you, so best to make changes as soon as possible and heal any damage. On the plus side it is very much reversible if you can remove the burden and aid detoxification by eating well and exercising.
Or it could just be that you have reached the happy point in your life when the years of excess/neglect have caught up and you are now paying the price
Yup, but what a ride 😀
Your liver is struggling. The liver removes toxins from the body, when you get into the new car you are overloading and so you get ill.
I was expecting the rest of that post to be a word for word quote from 3 Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome. But it seems you're serious.
“With me, it was my liver that was out of order. […] I had the symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being "a general disinclination to work of any kind."
What I suffer in that way no tongue can tell. From my earliest infancy I have been a martyr to it. As a boy, the disease hardly ever left me for a day. They did not know, then, that it was my liver. Medical science was in a far less advanced state than now, and they used to put it down to laziness.”
VOCs are adsorbed onto carbon, so you need an "activated carbon" filter in there. The molecules bond onto it and wont let go.
Infact you could even stuff some in the air vents, and then run the blowers to cycle the air. Should work.
(source: i used to deal with domestic heating oil spills, which included controlling odors when someone had lost 1000L of kerosene under the kitchen floor)
Never had it with 1000's of new vehicles through my hands but i have heard of the gassing from plastics. As everyone else has suggested just combat it with something else. We have some of those cartridge things which neutralize smells in vehicles, maybe they would work. TBH i would just put a bag of my families smelly trainers in a foot well for a few days, that would combat any new smell.
This reminds me of a situation i had a few years ago. I deal in vans and i had some getting plylined by a supplier. He had a delivery of ply as normal but i believe they use some rather nasty chemicals to preserve the wood. There had been some kind of issue and i believe it involved Formaldehyde. Anyhow i managed to drive the vehicle a few hundred yards before i could hardly see and a further few hundred yards before i got our retching. I was not very polite or understanding in my call for him to come and replace it.
Oh and there was the time i had a 25litre drum of diesel spilt in the boot of my 12mths old Mercedes C Class. I couldnt wait to hand that car back. Hot days were the worst.
VOCs are adsorbed onto carbon, so you need an “activated carbon” filter in there.
OOH this is interesting information.
^ Activated carbon for the win, destroys all smells. I should know as I used two large activated carbon filters for my grow room air extraction, no more smells but you do need to replace the activated carbon pellets every few months as they get saturated with the off gassing volatile organic compounds and lose efficiency
New car off gassing - yummy.
Indoor air quality in the modern world is a much neglected topic. Pretty much any soft furnishing and plenty of hard furnishings off-gas to some degree.
Cars are a more concentrated version of the same thing, with a much higher percentage of man mades, a really small air volume and in practice, poor ventilation for short periods of time before being closed up for long periods.
Maximum ventilation in warmer temperatures will maximise the speed of off-gassing, but its still going to take weeks/months to subside to an acceptable level. Adding perfumes and alot of the 'neutralisers' are just attempting to mask the problem with something that smells nicer, but are actually adding to your burden.
He had a delivery of ply as normal but i believe they use some rather nasty chemicals to preserve the wood. There had been some kind of issue and i believe it involved Formaldehyde
All plywood and MDF contains urea formaldehyde, hence why the edges need to be sealed in domestic use, it's carcinogenic, and most kitchens and camper van interiors are made out of it, sealed/painted is fine.
I used to have a dog that offgassed then jumped up wondering where the smell came from.
All plywood and MDF contains urea formaldehyde,
Yes, but in the tiniest proportions.
From my bookmarks heres a table -
0.1 Level expected to cause symptoms in sensitive individuals
0.75 OSHA worker exposure limit(Construction occupational health and safety)
0.01-0.14 Sawing and sanding MDF in ventilated dust chamber
0.19-0.78 Sanding particleboard under laboratory conditions
0.035-0.45 Newly constructed, unoccupied home
Not detectable–0.6 Buildings in which smoking is permitted
0.48–5.31 Indoor air while cooking fish
0.08 Urban background during heavy traffic
Sod frying fish 😆
All hardwoods have carcinogenic dust, its to give you the short version easiest to understand. Trees dont have bums, so all toxins are put into the internal 'dead' bit in the middle, known as the heartwood.