Why does rubber smell

That said, you can minimize the odor with some effort. Start by washing and airing out the flooring. To wash it, you want to use a ph neutral cleaner. Something like Simple Green works great. So does diluted vinegar. Just mix one cup distilled white vinegar with one gallon of hot water. Use a cloth and scrub down both sides of each piece of flooring. Once washed, set the flooring out to air dry. Prop it up on edge or set blocks under it so that air can pass over both sides.

Do this either outside or in a well ventilated area. You may want to leave your flooring here for a few days or weeks. The more odor the flooring starts with, the longer you are going to want to store it in a well ventilated area before installation. They are so smelly that you need to bring in the big guns. This will be true of any low quality rubber including low quality rubber bumper plates.

Probably the best way to speed up the off gassing of that stinky rubber floor is to put it out in the hot sun. The heat of the sun will help the pores of the rubber expand and open up. This will let the toxic VOCs and bad smell escape much more quickly than any other manner. Realistic time frames for this to work could be months. It will just be diminished. Better quality flooring could be almost odorless with just a couple of days in the sun.

Make sure that the flooring gets even sun and air exposure. And make sure you are doing this during the warmer months. Another caution is not to leave the flooring outside for too long. The sun can quickly dry the rubber, causing it to crack or loose elasticity. A good guideline is weeks max time outside. You could end up spending about twice as much on low odor flooring through Great Mats or another flooring outlet than you would spend on stall mats from Tractor Supply.

Especially considering that in addition to reducing odor, you are making a much healthier and safer choice. If you want to see all of your flooring options as well as what I selected and why, see my complete guide to home gym flooring here! In the end, take the necessary steps to make your gym a pleasant and safe place to be.

Once you have it built, you want to be happy with it and use it. If it smells and gives you headaches, that kind of defeats the purpose! Be the first to get exclusive content, free resources, and ninja level tips on building and making the most of your home gym! Read our privacy policy for more info. You Rock! Make sure to check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription. When you install rubber mats indoors, you may quickly start to notice a rubber flooring odor.

While some rubber materials have a stronger smell than others, that rubber odor can be overwhelming especially if you installed many mat in a smaller space, such as weight room or a garage. That smell can give people headaches, and if you are running a business then it could drive people away.

Rubber mats naturally give off an odor because they are made of rubber. Some mats made of vulcanized rubber are treated to help it minimize the odor. Other mats, such as for outdoor used on playgrounds or barns carries a significant odor. So far, no good accelerator that is free from these constituents has been found, but Messrs. Stevens and E. Parry, the chemists in charge of the investigation, have discovered that the presence of zinc carbonate in the compounding mixture reduces the smell to a minimum.

The slight amino smell characteristic of the unvulcanised plantation rubber has been traced by them to the proteins, and not to the resins, present in the raw material and it can be practically eliminated if the latex is purified by such methods as digestion with dilute caustic, ceritrifuging, creaming, ultra-filtration, or dialysis. When the problem has been definitely solved, it will be possible to use vulcanised rubber for lining food-containers and brewers vats, and in the preparation or packing of foodstuffs in general.

Reprints and Permissions. Odour of Vulcanised Rubber. Nature , 95 Download citation. Issue Date : 15 July