[aslii]

Not sure if this is the right place to be posting this but figured somebody on here may be able to help. I have a plastic Yeti cooler that has a really bad, lasting smell from dead fish and bait that got left in there for too long. The smell is extremely hard to remove, I’ve tried ozone generator, bleach, baking soda, vinegar, etc. These seemed to help a little bit but the smell always comes back. Is anybody able to tell me what’s going on here from a chemistry standpoint and is there any hope for salvaging this or should I just pitch and get a new one? (I’d really like to try any route possible to save it as it’s a customized cooler and very expensive)

[Borek]

It is not uncommon for compounds that are responsible for smell to diffuse deep into the plastic. Methods you tried do work to some extent, but they get rid only of the very thin external layer of the material, so the smell will keep coming back.

It will eventually stop, but it can get years of keeping the cooler open. No matter what method you try, you are probably limited by the diffusion speed.