Dr. A's Plasticized Catalytic Converter
Channel: Sean Anderson
Date: 2018-10-04

Two days ago my family started noticing a burning rubber or burning plastic smell in the garage near by Prius.  After first dismissing their smelling skills, I had to apologize as we confirmed that indeed there was a burning smell coming from the rear of my car.  I checked around the wheels this morning, but couldn't find anything that seemed to be rubbing nor anything about the suspension that suggested the tires were abrading, etc.  Given that my son is learning to drive and a frequent driver of this car, I decided to swing into the Thousand Oaks Toyota dealership today to see if they couldn't track down the problem.  

Once the car was up on the rack, the culprit was obvious; a thick plastic fertilizer bag had wrapped itself around my catalytic converter and was very slowly melting away as the 600° F unit slowly converted the solid plastic into volatile hydrocarbons (the burning we smelled) and what must have been a huge plume of microplastic pieces and fibers.  This was likely the large bag that blew in front of my car on the 101 freeway two days prior, likely flotsam from some gardener's or landscaper's truck bed.

So we have yet another great example of the downsides of plastic pollution and of the overuse and overproduction of plastic materials across our society.