The perfume bottle on your dashboard is a lens
Everyone has a perfume they like, and plenty of people keep one in the car. Colonel Osama Bahar of the Interior Ministry would like motorists to think about what that glass bottle can do when left in direct sunlight.
Start with the temperature. Park in direct sun when it is 35 degrees outside, he said, and within 15 to 30 minutes, the temperature inside the car can rise by another 15 degrees. Outside at 35, inside at 50.
Leave it for between half an hour and an hour and the temperature can rise by another 20 degrees. What was 50 becomes 70. In under an hour, a 35-degree day can produce a 70-degree cabin.
In a Bahraini summer, the starting point can be even higher. If the outside temperature is 40 or 45 degrees, those increases are added to an already extreme heat level.
Other factors can push the temperature further. A dark-coloured exterior absorbs more heat, while the colour and material of the seats, whether cloth or leather, can also affect how hot the interior becomes.
Then there is the bottle.
A glass container, including a perfume bottle, can act like a convex lens, focusing sunlight into a concentrated point. The heat generated at that point can become intense enough to ignite flammable material.
Put the elements together and the risk becomes clear: strong sunlight, trapped heat, a cabin reaching extreme temperatures, focused sunlight and flammable material in the same area.
Colonel Bahar's advice is simple: do not leave perfume bottles or other glass containers inside a vehicle, particularly on the dashboard, during the summer.
Using a sunshade across the windscreen can also help prevent direct sunlight from entering the vehicle and reduce the amount of heat building up inside.
There is another reason to take the perfume bottle out. Prolonged exposure to high temperatures can affect the fragrance itself, meaning the perfume left in a hot car may not smell the way it did when it was bought.
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