How to Remove Melted Plastic Odor From the Dishwasher

If you smell a noxious odor in your house while running the dishwasher, it could be a piece of plastic, such as a slotted plastic spoon, that fell on heated drying system. It's a smelly mess, but you should be able to remove the melted plastic and the lingering odor within hours and only about 20 minutes of labor.

Things You'll Need

• 2 cups of baking soda
• Thick plastic scraper
• Dishwashing detergent
• Disposable cloth rag
• Roll of paper towels
• Face mask (optional)

Instructions

1. Turn on your oven ventilation system to begin moving out the contaminated air. Open windows if the weather allows.

2. Remove the plastic. If your dishwasher has removable racks, take the racks out, dishes and all, and set them aside. Remove what you can of the melted plastic; tie it off in a plastic bag to avoid further spreading of odor. Allow the system to cool completely so that the plastic hardens. Use your plastic scraping tool to scrape off the pieces. If you don't have a scraping tool made for the kitchen, try using a small car ice scraper. While a butter knife or metal utensil can be used, this is more likely to damage the heating unit. As you scrape off the metal chunks, wipe them up with paper towels to keep them from falling into the dishwasher's water reservoir.

3. Remove the remaining plastic residue. Once you've removed all the sizable chunks of plastic, reintroduce the heating element so you can melt off the remaining residue before you return any dishes to the dishwasher. Wear a face mask during this part of the process. Close the dishwasher, still emptied of its dish racks, and turn the cycle to "heated dry." Allow about five minutes for the drying rack to heat up. Open it up, and wipe the dry rack with a cloth rag or paper towels. Use a clean piece of the rag each time to avoid spreading melted plastic. As needed, close the dishwasher and turn the heating element back on to reheat the plastic. Continue this process until you can wipe the heating element without seeing any residue transferred to your rag.

4. Deal with the odor. Unfortunately, you still have a dishwasher load full of stinky dishes. Neutralize the melted plastic smell by pouring 1 cup of baking soda on the bottom of the dishwasher. Replace the dish racks and dishes, and sprinkle the dishes directly with up to 1 more cup of baking soda. Put dishwashing detergent in the second rinse cup of the washer. Turn off the "heated dry" function. Run the dishwasher on a second rinse cycle. The baking soda will neutralize odors and work in the water reservoir of the dishwasher to remove lingering residue. When the cycle is done, hand dry your dishes and put them away.

5. Run a test before using the heated dry system. Now that you've removed residual odor and put away your dishes, run a test by once again switching on the dishwasher' s heated dry cycle. If there's no odor this time, you're good to go. You can run your next load of dishes normally. If the melted plastic smell returns, you won't want to run the heated dry function with dishes in the dishwasher until the odor is completely gone. Repeat step 2 and follow up with another cycle run with baking soda.