Health concerns with simplified choice mattresses

[phoenix]

Hi techmattr,

She had been complaining of chest pain and trouble breathing and we never attributed it to the mattress until just now. 7 years later. We only had that mattress for a month.

I have also had an issue with “symptoms” on a particular memory foam topper (not Tempurpedic) but I have slept on many other types of memory foam as well without experiencing any symptoms (see post #2 here). If your wife is still experiencing symptoms 7 years later then it’s very unlikely that they were caused by the memory foam because in almost all cases any symptoms that come from sleeping on memory foam will resolve themselves within a week or so (and usually less) after you stop using it.

The other concern was mold. I see tons of complaints of mold on Tempurpedic and apparently they don’t cover it in their warranty. My parents had a Tempurpedic and it developed a mold issue and they had to throw it out as the retail store and Tempurpedic wouldn’t do anything about it. We visited a large national mattress chain this past weekend that carried Tempurpedic and Sealy Optimum and even a few of the mattresses there had mold on the bottom. It’s not hard to find people who report mold problems for pretty much any of the memory foam mattresses. I wasn’t able to find any for Brooklyn Bedding which is pleasantly surprising. I expected to see at least a couple pictures in Google images.

While it’s uncommon for any mattress to develop mold issues … if there are a combination of risk factors that affect humidity and ventilation in a mattress then it can make mold issues more likely. Tempurpedic uses a solid surface foundation that doesn’t have any ventilation and this in combination with other risk factors can certainly contribute to the formation of mold … especially in the bottom of a mattress (see post #10 here). With a foundation that provides better ventilation under a mattress this would be very unlikely to happen with any mattress.

For the price and return policy it seems the Brooklyn Bedding BestMattressEver is definitely worth trying. If my wife has any issues with it I guess we could look into the organic brands but that looks to be a $5~6K investment.

While there are certainly some benefits to using organic materials that can be important for some people for personal or lifestyle reasons (see post #3 here) … in many cases non organic versions of the same material (with latex and wool especially) can be just as “safe” and free from chemicals and have the same properties, performance, and durability as their certified organic counterparts. There is more about the different levels of organic certifications in post #2 here. There are also many mattresses available that use all organic materials and fibers that are in much lower price ranges than the prices you mentioned if an organic certification is an important part of your criteria outside of the safety of or any “chemicals” in the materials themselves.

Phoenix