I’m not sure what other lemmy community might be fitting for this post, so here I go. Feel free to redirect me if you know of another community that might have an answer for me.

Starting this year, my whole kitchen starts smelling really weird whenever I turn on my electric oven.

It’s not inside the oven. I just turned it on, and when the smell was starting to appear, I opened the oven and smelled the warm air. It was smelling as normal, so it’s something outside the oven.

It’s an odd smell that doesn’t smell like anything I’ve ever experienced. I’ve talked about this with a friend, they suggested it might be the insulation around the oven that might contain some kind of bacterial growth. My washing machine did flood my kitchen a bit between the years, but since the oven has a drawer underneath, I’d be surprised if the insulation got wet somehow. Could the insulation get bacterial growth from just high air humidity for a few days?

Are there things I could to to test whether the air is safe to breathe? The smell just smells… off. It’s not a sharp smell, but I do feel like I get a slight headache whenever I smell it, which might just be placebo because of the deeply unpleasant smell.

I’m at a loss as to what I can do short of replacing the whole thing, which seems overkill.