Don Draper, the hero of the TV "Mad Men," firmly believed that "happiness is the smell of a new car."
The hard-living advertising exec with the V-8 libido knew that people had a visceral response to that unique aroma -- and there's plenty of science to back him up.
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New car smell stirs up feelings up success, power and potential. The smell is so appealing that there's even a fragrance called "New Car" that seeks to capture that singular scent.
But Don Draper was a denizen of the sixties, back when people enjoyed three-martini lunches, three packs of cigarettes a day, and three pounds of red meat to wash it all down.
All of that stuff was bad for you, and -- brace yourselves, people--it looks like new car smell can be hazardous to your health as well.
Serious Chemical Components
A study by a research team from the Beijing Institute found that the smell of a new ride is a bad news cocktail of formaldehyde, benzene, and other chemicals floating in the air that could irritate your skin, eyes, nose, and throat and even cause cancer.
The team conducted a 12-day field observation of a new car that was left outside in varying environmental conditions and monitored 20 common chemicals that were produced.
The chemical levels were way above Chinese national safety standards. Concentrations of formaldehyde, which is a known cancer-causing compound and is often used to preserve cadavers, went 34.9% above standards.
Another dangerous carcinogen, acetaldehyde, was 61% higher than the standard. The concentration of the chemical peaked at 223.5 micrograms per cubic meter, more than double the acceptable threshold.
The study says that people who spend just 30 minutes daily in a car can expose them to enough of these carcinogens to put them at risk.
And, oh, yeah, concentrations of the chemicals increased with warmer weather.
"Many of us like new car smell (myself included)," Prof. Oliver Jones, Professor of Chemistry, RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, said in Science Media Centre.
Best Smell is No Smell
Jones said that many of the compounds are listed as cancer-causing, "but then so are sunlight and alcohol."
"It is the dose that makes the poison – just because something is present does not automatically mean it’s a problem; it’s about quantity (even water is toxic if you drink enough of it)," he added. "The current paper is focused on ways to better model how much of the chemicals that cause new car smell might be released over time in a car under different conditions."
Jones acknowledged that new car smell is not without risks, adding that "healthwise the best new-car smell is probably no smell."
The study produced some rather rank reactions on social media, with one person tweeting "Just when you thought you’d heard it all."
"Like no one owned a new car before 2021, or gardened, ate eggs for breakfast, skipped breakfast, had naps, changed their bedding, had a difficult relationship or shoveled snow before either!" another person said. "It’s absolute madness but we’re the conspiracy theorists."
"The day they start vaccinating cars is the day I quit driving," another tweet read. "They can’t force our cars to take an untested experimental vaccine there will be carnage."
And still another person gave a nod to Tesla's (TSLA) top executive.
"Tesla cars don’t have a new car small," the commenter said. "They have, wait for it, an Elon Musk."
