I just got a new plastic shower curtain liner. I ran it through the washer with detergent, then through the drier, then hung it. Now the entire house smells like plastic. I had thought the detergent would have helped, but the smell is really obnoxious (and probably noxious). Would it help to wash it with white vinegar? Anything else? And if I don’t do anything, will the smell eventually disappear?
Assuming it’s like the last one I bought, yes. It takes a week or so, but it does go away. Packing it to move will cause it to smell like plastic again when it’s unpacked.
It just has to air out and outgas for a few days. Washing it probably won’t help at all.
The smell is in the plastic, not on the plastic. It will take a few weeks to air out. If you really find the smell that obnoxious get a fabric liner. They work just fine.
In my experience, the really cheap vinyl liners are really stinky when you first open the package, but the more expensive ones are slightly less obnoxious.
Only slightly, though. As **astro **suggests, fabric liners work well, and have the added benefit of being easy to toss into the laundry once a month or so.
I don’t have advice on how to get rid of the smell, but I can offer advice on how to avoid the smell next time.
On your next purchase, let the curtain air outside (or some other well ventilated area) before bringing it inside
Warning, I may be talking out of my ass: The smell comes from certain plastic polymers breaking down and entering the air. It’s the same as the new car smell. You can’t speed up this process or slow it down just by washing it with water and detergent. Your best bet is to just get a lot of circulating air in there to dilute those airborne polymers.
Putting a plastic liner in the dryer probably prompted the smell to get worse. Warming up the plastic released even more of the plastic smell.
I’ve got the bathroom window open, and the central AC is set to “fan.” It helps, but I clearly need to give it more time. Thanks to everyone for your input.
I notice the cats are not going into the bathroom.
All plastic seems to do this. I’ve been waylaid by the awful smell of a brand new plastic tablecloth. When we hung up a set of cheapie vertical blinds from Lowe’s, they smelled so bad it actually made our eyes water. Only time, a couple days, a week, will make the smell fade.
It’s the price we pay, I guess, for cheap and plentiful. But it will fade.
I don’t think that plastic shower curtains need to be machine dried anyway. Just hang them up when they’re wet, and they’ll dry in no time at all. After all, you don’t take them down and machine dry them after every bath or shower, do you?
Crap. Now I’m going to have to watch my shower curtain and see how long it takes to dry after a shower, because I NEED TO KNOW the answer since it’s been brought to my attention.
Am I the only one that likes the new shower curtain smell?
Most shower curtains are vinyl (PVC), and are softened by impregnation with a plasticizer, usually diethylhexyl phthalate. This compound is known to outgas from vinyl, particularly when it’s new. It’s noxious (and running it through the dryer didn’t help), but after a while, it tails off and becomes unnoticeable.
For a week after I hung my new shower curtain in my new apartment, I was wondering if I should call the cops to report a decomposing corpse in the bathroom below mine.
In other words, yes. Yes, you are.
I don’t mind it as much as some. It can be kind of overpowering fresh out of the package, but it’s not a nausea inducing smell like some others. The one smell I cannot stand is the scented trash can liners. Overpowering and amazingly offensive. I can’t be in the same room with one for more than a few minutes.
I like it. New shower curtain day is one of my favorite days.
If you have a clothesline, you could put it on the clothesline, fully extended, and let the fresh air and breeze carry away the offgassing.
I do this with new shower curtain liners (not on my clothesline, but in my carport) and recently did it with some new DIY window blinds that were seriously stinky when I got them out of the box.