Case History: BURNED POPCORN IN A MICROWAVE

By: Joy Senn and Debbie Huffmaster Location: Houston, Texas, U.S.A. Date: January 12,14, 1991

The front office coffee room at NonScents' home office in Houston, Texas often gets quite a bit of use, and sometimes mild abuse during the day from various types of cooking activity. On two separate and closely spaced occasions popcorn that was being cooked in the microwave oven caused a big stink in this appliance, room and surrounding area, which required the use of NonScents to deodorize the problem.

The first occasion involved Joy Senn, NonScents' Desktop Publisher, who was cooking some Lite Pop Microwave Popcorn in the microwave. Someone distracted her with a problem that they were involved with and she went out of the coffee room. The microwave was set for 4 minutes. When she returned to the coffee room the timer was off, and there was a very strong odor of burned popcorn coming from the microwave. Joy threw the burned popcorn out in the trash outside of the offices, and someone else put a 4 oz. bag of NonScents into the opened microwave to deodorize it. After about 1/2 hour the room and microwave were odor free.

Two days later Debbie Hnffmaster, NonScents' Shipping and Production Manager, was making some popcorn in the same microwave. She was using Orvill eRedenbacher's Gourmet Singles Microwave Popping Corn with butter. Debbie put the popcorn in the microwave and set the timer for 4 minutes according to the instructions. She was called to her of rice for a telephone call. Several minutes later, when she Wished the call she found people gasping for breath in the office hallway, and trying to find the culprit that had burned the popcorn, because the flames from this accident were very heavy. The popcorn bag was thrown in the trash outside of the building and two fresh caps (2 lb. bags) were brought into the coffee room. One cap was put into the open microwave and the other was just placed on a table in the room A 16 inch fan was brought into the room and placed in front of the microw ave and turned on a low setting. After about a half hour all the burned popcorn odors had been removed from the microwave oven, coffee room and hallway.