Bad air permeating the coffee

Question: Hi Marc, I work in an office and we are all coffee drinkers, but no matter which drip coffee maker we use, the coffee tasts terribel. I make coffee at home and It tastes great. The building we work in is old and we have had heating oil leaks where the smell just permeated everything. Is it possible that the air in our office is bad and it is being absorbed into our coffee makers (plastic housing)and do you have any suggestions on a particular type of coffee maker that would be a better choice? We are at our witts end....Thank you. -- Sharon D.Answer: Sharon, thank you for this rather unique question. What you're proposing as the problem isn't out of the question. As I understand it, when a liquid is in contact with air, there is a constant diffusion of the air in and out of the liquid. Coffee is almost entirely water and so the oxygen in the water is going to interact with the oxygen in the air of your office. If you leave an uncovered glass of water on the counter and drink it hours later, you will taste a difference. While the settling of dust accounts for part of it, interaction with the air accounts for the rest. But what to do?The fact is that if the air is contaminating your coffee that badly, it's hard to believe you breathe the same air all day every day. A slight tinge would be one thing, but you describe a terrible tasting coffee. If you can smell the oil leak, you're breathing the oil leak. I don't suspect the ground coffee is being contaminated so much as the brewed coffee sitting in the pot or in somebody's uncovered mug. Also, it might have less to do with the air and more with a bad coffee maker. Here are some things to try:- Your coffee maker makes good coffee. Bring it into the office for one day as the constant of an experiment. If it doesn't taste the same in your office as in your home, you know the problem is in your office. If it does taste the same, then the office coffee maker is your problem, and you'll want to read about how to fix bad coffee taste.- If the problem is in your office, it might still be the coffee maker. Follow the same link as above to make sure the coffee maker itself isn't the problem. The vinegar cycle should clean out contaminants.- If it's a good machine making terrible coffee where your own home machine made good coffee in the same environment, I'd likely buy the story that it's the air in your office. Aside from wearing a respirator to work for starters, there are only so many solutions. A thermal carafe has less contact area with air than the standard glass carafe. Otherwise, you would need a completely airtight unit and unfortunately, such a device that feeds directly into your airtight mug doesn't exist yet.I hope this information helps. Learn more about Coffee Makers and our unbiased review.