No major surprise that this is happening to be honest, hopefully those searching for natural mattresses for themselves or for their children will read about this before making a final decision. It’s really too bad this didn’t happen sooner but thank you to Phoenix for also always trying to be objective and searching for the truth regarding many unscrupulous claims in this industry.
Hi budgy,
Thanks for posting this link. Someone sent this to me yesterday and my thoughts like you were “better late than never”.
On a related note … I sent an email to Greenguard (used by several manufacturers as a certification for VOC’s and which is the certification used by Tempflow/Relief Mart as well as others such as OMI) to ask them if their testing protocol was published so it could be compared to others such as Oeko-Tex. They replied with a link that sent me here.
If you sign up and click on the links and try to “check out” with a free download you get an error message that says the link to checkout isn’t functioning correctly.
I emailed them back to ask if there was a place to see the testing protocol and the limits that they use without having to sign up to a website so they could be meaningfully compared to other testing protocols but they didn’t reply.
I question what use a testing protocol really is when what it tests for isn’t easily or publicly available.
Phoenix
ADDED: The download is now functioning
Here is Essentia’s response to the FTC action as stated on their blog:
In other words, Essentia essentially cops to nothing and remains incorrigible!
Unfortunately, they may be correct in stating that the FTC “didn’t argue that we are still the world’s first and only natural memory foam mattress.” Essentia’s claim of making “natural memory foam” is dubious and really a contradiction in terms—Phoenix elaborates on this in one of his Essentia posts. However, while the FTC tested Essentia for VOCs, they seem not to have taken the extra step of chemically analyzing the material itself.
Hi Bedimpediment,
[quote]In other words, Essentia essentially cops to nothing and remains incorrigible!
Unfortunately, they may be correct in stating that the FTC “didn’t argue that we are still the world’s first and only natural memory foam mattress.” Essentia’s claim of making “natural memory foam” is dubious and really a contradiction in terms—Phoenix elaborates on this in one of his Essentia posts. However, while the FTC tested Essentia for VOCs, they seem not to have taken the extra step of chemically analyzing the material itself. [/quote]
I couldn’t agree with you more.
For those who are interested there is a chemical analysis of their “memory foam” in the attachments.
Phoenix
Phoenix,
Thank you so much for your expose of Essentia. I was getting ready to visit their NYC showroom when I did a check on your website. OMFG. And you hit the nail on the head - for someone just looking for a comfy mattress who cares about exact VOC’s or chemical analysis? But when you are looking for a non-memory foam mattress for an immune-compromised child? And the site lies to your face? BTW, it still says that its memory foam is “natural” and “latex” and some sap milk.
I am disappointed with Relief-Mart (I have their mattress) but at least they didn’t lie about the components of the mattress. It is memory foam and in my experience with several memory foam mattress, the least VOC of them all. But, minimal does not equal zero and I am glad that they, Ecobaby and Essentia were reprimanded.
Some advice: I tried searching your site for “Essentia” but it still kept giving me results for essential and essentially which made it time-consuming to find your post. Also there is one long thread that has the word “essentia” but doesn’t describe the issue. Can you put the Essentia expose in your “articles” section?
Deborah
Hi dpastor,
You can see some comments about the FTC action and Relief Mart in post #6 here. They were “less deserved” IMO than the other two.
The articles section is for generic information that would apply more generally and not for specific information about certain manufacturers (and it and other sections will be changing into a “research center” over the course of the next few months) but there are some tips for searching the site for more difficult search terms like “essentia” in the help section here that will bring up more relevant search results (in the case of a search term like “essentia” a google site search would be the most effective of the three search methods) and of course if anyone asks about them then I can also link them to the relevant information in my reply. Using multiple search words like “essentia FTC” in the forum search (vs the site search or a google site search) will also reduce the number of search results.
I would like to find a more effective Joomla search module that has more specific search options that would “do everything” but at this point there isn’t one that does everything that I would want it to do so the forum search is usually the best choice for most searches followed by the site search and then the google site search.
Phoenix