I’m wondering if anyone has shopped at Bed Bath & Beyond for a memory foam topper? I recently purchased one (their most expensive one it seems) called the Therapedic MemoryTouch 3" Luxury Quilted memory foam mattress topper:
1-Is this a reputable company? The topper smells awful. I’ve had it for about 2 weeks now and while it’s a little less smelly, it still is pretty bad. I’m frankly a little worried that I’m sleeping on toxic waste!
2-Is there any way to tell what the ILD of this topper is?
Thanks for any help. This website is absolutely terrific.
Therapedic is a licensee group and I would call them a reputable company yes.
Having said that it’s fairly normal that there is some smell with a new memory foam topper or mattress (some more than others) or any material for that matter and some people can also be more sensitive to this than others. If the memory foam is made in North America and CertiPur certified* (which a retailer should be able to tell you) then at least you have some assurance that the material has been tested for harmful substances or harmful VOC’s but even with this some people will still be sensitive to some memory foam toppers and some batches of memory foam can be worse than others. There are also some people who are more sensitive to the offgassing from memory foam and can have some symptoms when they sleep on it so if you are experiencing actual symptoms that you suspect come from the topper other than just the smell then I personally would remove it from your mattress and if the symptoms disappear then you would know they are coming from the memory foam. You can read more of the types of symptoms that some people experience here but these are fairly old and before CertiPur existed.
In most cases the smell will gradually diminish over the course of the first few weeks to levels that most people don’t notice but there are also a few cases where with some batches of foam the smell will last longer. Post #3 here has more about the smell of new materials and some ways that can help reduce them.
In a word no. ILD (or with memory foam or polyfoam the newer terminology and testing method called IFD) is not really a relevant spec with memory foam because it changes with temperature, humidity, and the amount of time that the memory foam is compressed when you sleep on it and there are many other factors that are just as important if not more important parts of how “soft” memory foam feels than ILD/IFD (including the response and recovery time and the temperature sensitivity of the memory foam). ILD/IFD testing with memory foam also produces results that are not comparable to other types of faster recovery foam in terms of how soft or firm they feel and they are only useful to some degree to compare with other types of memory foam. Some manufacturers do provide the ILD/IFD of their memory foam toppers or materials but it can be very misleading because it’s not comparable to the ILD/IFD of polyfoam which in turn isn’t comparable to the ILD of latex.