Thanks for including the article, I’ve actually read that. I spoke at length to Walt Bader the owner of OMI and Lifekind about this and he seemed a little slippery when I was trying to pin him down on what they were experiencing; that’s why I wanted to post on the forum. In the past we have only had the smell issues like this with the blended latex from LI (talatech). I was worried that they were substituting blended latex. I became even more concerned when we started getting some sag issues; because the blended latex has a much higher failure rate for us.
Phoenix, do you think that they could call this product latex if it comes from a different plant? Very informative post and article. Lew
Hi Lew,
Yes … latex just means a rubber particle suspended in water and about 10% of plants (including Russian Dandelion) produce latex in some form although very few produce enough to be commercially viable.
It’s just as much “latex” as any other type of rubber.
Phoenix
Apparently there are lots of different plant species that produce sap categorized as latex. Only a couple of different species are farmed for this purpose.
Okay, I thought that latex, synthetic or natural, had a specific molecular structure. Lew
Hi Lew,
Most natural latex is polyisoprene and most synthetic latex is Styrene Butadiene but they are both rubber particles even though there are many types of rubber with different molecular structures.
Phoenix
Hi
How much time in jail did this CEO of LI do for his misdoings?
Also did I read somewhere that Sealy owns a latex manufacturer or was in the process of buying one?
Thanks
They owned a “latex” manufacturing facility back when we carried them in 2005 (it was either all or mostly synthetic). Now that they are owned by the same folks as Tempur, I wonder if they will consolidate manufacturing of some components?
BGarfield,
I am not a retailer, but a customer who has had a lot of trouble with my new latex mattress which I have posted about. My latex after 4 months still has a very strong smell-not terrible, but I thought this was just the way it was supposed to be. If it is not supposed to smell than I have been putting up with it for no reason.
The other issue, one of many that I have, is that I too have been complaining that any new layer or piece of latex I get seems to sag very quickly. It is very noticeable compared to the other side of the bed which I do not sleep on. My mattress is made from all blended latex from Latex Int.
I brought this sagging issue up to the store and was told that latex doesn’t sag like I described. I was told that the only possibility could be that maybe one of my layers was “labeled” with the incorrect ILD by accident, but that it was not probable.
Now it sounds that I may have been correct about the sagging after all.
I will watch this post to see what if anything is recommended or what anyone has to add.
Thank you
Hi Jege41,
Sealy used to own Sapsa (and was the largest latex producer in the world) but sold it a few years ago. They are still partners and continue to pour continuous pour Dunlop latex at their Mountaintop latex foam pouring plant in Pennsylvania. They make various Dunlop blends from mostly synthetic up to 85% natural latex. They have recently started expanding their sales to other manufacturers although Ikea has used their latex for some time.
They are one of three latex foam pouring facilities in the US (Latex International for Talalay, and Latexco and Sealy for continuous pour Dunlop).
He was sentenced to 6 years.
Phoenix
I just learned about this site yesterday, and it is a great forum. Wow.
So regarding blended latex, particularly the Talatech product by LI, we have have seen a fairly high failure rate (read 1-5%). Less so with the all botanical rubber, but the number has been increasing, hence me starting this thread. We have had far fewer Dunlop cores fail; however, when they have, it has usually been the blended rubber, and not the botanical rubber.
Through the years we have had: Englander Latex, Stearns & Foster Latex, Sealy (same as S&F really), OMI, Natura, 45th Street Bedding, and even Strobel.
Of all those companies we have had at least one, if not several core failures, or sagging problems, with the exception of the 45th Street Bedding product. The highest rate of issues came with the Strearns & Foster latex. I think it has to do with the quality of rubber they produce. It was not the same sort of weight look or feel as any of the other latex we have carried. I categorize it as barely discernible as latex. The Englander latex quality has varied through the years, but stayed pretty good. They switched rubber sources a couple times over the last 27 years that we carried them. Englander’s issue has been that they are willing to wave a piece of latex over the top of a block of poly foam and it is magically called a latex mattress. In my opinion the only beds that should be allowed to be described as latex should have no other foams in them. Furthermore, I think blended latex gives botanical rubber a bad name.
But I digress, OMI’s percentage-wise are shaping up to have the second highest rate of failure behind the Sealy/Stearns product we carried (this is 7 years ago though with the Sealy/S&F, and times may have changed). The OMI issues are fresh, so I’m trying to temper my statements, as we have them in stock. The Strobel’s were goofy, and didn’t sell well anyway. Natura’s were pretty good. Our biggest issues with those had to do with the wool compressing, and the beds not being upholstered on both sides. However, they use(d) LI latex that was pieced together from multiple pieces, and then laminated together. This wouldn’t have been an issue if they didn’t have zipper removable covers that allowed access to the foam so people could see the look of the latex, and if the rubber itself didn’t feel like it was different densities on each of the different pieces.
Gluing pieces together to make a larger core is a recipe for problems. Queen, king or cal king cores or layers should be one unified piece of latex.
TL,DR: Latex is great, but not perfect. Even the best rubber manufacturers have bad cores. OUR FAILURE % for some types are more than others. Sapsa was the highest, LI Talalay has been second. Botanical Dunlop is the lowest (seemingly regardless of source), and everything else is in between. It seems like the higher percentage of synthetic the more it wears like poly foam.
Hi
Thank you for all the information.
Some of your findings I find very interesting especially having fewer failures with botanical latex/all natural as it is called. I have been told by individuals in the industry that blended talalay is better and more durable than all natural, even though my better judgment told me different. No matter how you look at it the bedding industry needs to be regulated to the point so the consumer is provided with precise specifications on the materials in the mattress. It is possible that many people wouldn’t bother to educate themselves on what the Specs. even mean but at least for those who did would have the assurance and tools needed for recourse if perhaps they have an issue down the line.
Thanks for you input
Jlsgreenwich
As you can see from this and other threads, this sagging problem is not common, but does happen. The person at your mattress store who said latex doesn’t sag was telling you what they had been told in training or believed it from their limited experience. I spent many years in the audio industry and it always bothered me when a customer had a problem that a technician couldn’t reproduce and the customer would be told their was nothing wrong. I would calm them down and tell them I knew there was a problem, but we just couldn’t reproduce it. People need to be validated, not treated like they are crazy. Phoenix was very good about doing that with me when I reported my second bad mattress.
I read your post about your mattress sagging and how you would roll back into the indentation. Even if the mattress top is level, the softening of your foam is creating what I dubbed a “virtual” body impression. If necessary, ask someone from the store to come by to check it out. I lay down in the offending spot for 20 minutes before Sean from My Sleep Nation came by to make sure he would feel the indentation, and he did.
Stay tuned! :unsure: Lew
Hi jege41,
In this case your “better judgement” may not be completely accurate because there are several factors involved in durability and longevity vs “failure” of a material.
If you were to talk with a cross section of mattress manufacturers who have experience with every type of latex over the long term or talk with the manufacturers of the latex itself, their experience would give you some different insights and you would find some different opinions based on their own long term experience.
In the lower ILD’s and in an apples to apples (same ILD) comparison … blended talalay will be more durable than all natural talalay in the lower ILD’s (see post #2 here). In the lower ILD’s the natural elasticity of the talalay and its thinner cell walls along with the greater inconsistency of natural latex works against it and it ill be less durable than a blend. This will start to even out as the ILD’s get higher.
With Dunlop it’s the other way around because of its higher density, greater firmness in most cases, and the properties of natural latex itself (see post #2 here for a comparison between natural latex and synthetic latex). While overall natural latex has more desirable qualities than SBR (synthetic) latex … the synthetic does have some advantages over natural in some areas that can add to its properties so it’s not quite as black and white as “natural is better”. Even good synthetic rubber is a higher quality material than most polyfoam and not the same at all. Tires are the same and tires that include synthetic rubber will last longer than natural rubber tires although natural rubber can add to higher performance.
Softness itself is also a durability factor and softer materials (which are much more common with blended Talalay) will be less durable than firmer materials of the same type.
Phoenix
Hi Phoenix
Thank you for the response and I don’t dispute your research however I’m still curious why and how bad latex is produced given the formulas I assume are calculated and tested prior to manufacturing? What causes the issues that Lew and myself and many others have encountered recently with LI talalay caving in?
Hi jege41,
This could have many causes and to be perfectly honest in most cases reports of latex that has abnormal softening is more about subjective perceptions or what is under the latex than it is about actual premature softening of the latex itself (beyond what is normal). In your case for example … your “symptoms” and the pictures you sent me and I posted show more of the “symptoms and appearance” of something under the latex being the cause than the latex itself although of course they could also be misleading. The only way to really tell whether this was the case would have been to put the latex topper on a flat floor to eliminate the possibility that something under the latex wasn’t the cause. This is what Lew called “virtual impressions” which involve something under the mattress that isn’t visible when it has no weight on it.
Having said that … there are certainly cases where latex does soften too quickly or is defective and this is true of all foams. While I don’t know all the possible reasons for this … they would usually boil down to quality control of some sort ranging from how the latex is compounded or how it is manufactured or cured. Good quality latex foam is not easy to manufacture consistently. In some cases it could be because of long term compression in storage or shipping (more often with Dunlop) or exposure to conditions or substances that degrade latex more quickly. Besides ultraviolet light and ozone … you can see a list here of most of the chemicals or compounds that can affect natural rubber that is exposed to them.
Phoenix
Actually I meant this term to refer to a softening of the foam to the point that it would feel like a body impression when lying in the softened area. The mattress might look perfectly flat, but didn’t act like it when slept on. Lew
Hi Lew,
Yes … I think we are talking about the same thing and I just liked your terminology 
Like you I was referring to the fact that a mattress may look perfectly flat but still have soft spots in it that “act” like impressions even though they’re not. The same could be true of a topper or any foam of course.
The pictures to me don’t have the appearance of a topper that is softening and look more like something under the mattress that is causing the issue which is why it would have been nice to put the topper on the floor to see if it still had the same impressions and visual appearance when there was nothing underneath it (virtual or otherwise) for the latex to “follow”.
Phoenix
Gotcha, as for the pictures, I thought it looked like a sagging mattress too, but realized that a badly sagging topper could give that impression also (pun intended). jege41’s method of measuring the height of the topper with a pencil ruler sounded good, as not everyone has a larger enough area to lay out a king or queen size topper. Also, he says the underlying mattress is completely flat and that he hasn’t had the same problem with the Latexco topper.
It would be nice to see these things in person. It would have been easy to persuade you that I has a problem with the second mattress is you had been able to lie on it.
Lew
Hi Lew,
I completely agree with this and it’s one of the challenges of dealing on a forum “at a distance”
One of the biggest challenges with reports of “latex softening” is that in the large majority of cases they are more about the initial choice itself and a change in subjective perception over the course of the first month’s adjustment period than they are even about the latex itself breaking in. In most cases … after sleeping on latex for a month or more it actually feels softer than it does at the beginning as the body adjusts and people become used to a different feel. In some cases this leads to complaints of foam softening when in fact it’s more about changes in perception and changes in the body from sleeping an a new and “different” material that redistributes pressure and aligns the body in different ways than they are used to.
The difficulty with this is that these types of reports are such a large part of the total that they sometimes don’t do justice to the small minority of legitimate reports of latex that has actually softened or is impressing prematurely. My first assumption with latex softening reports with higher quality latex is that it’s perception or “normal” softening (less than other materials) but that perceptions have changed over time and that the original choice was softer than their ideal but it took a month or so to realize this so it appears that the latex has softened when it hasn’t.
The pictures appear to me to indicate sagging of the whole layer (top to bottom) and not foam softening and the “shape” of the middle ridge is “sharper” than it would normally be if the topper itself had softened so appearances indicate that the topper is sagging into something and not itself impressed (which is also different from the actual softening of the material) but again … appearances can be misleading sometimes and they can also lead to making assumptions that aren’t correct no matter what the pictures seem to indicate.
The bottom line is that the experience itself is very real … even if it is subjective or has causes that haven’t been correctly identified … and no matter what the cause … if it’s leading to poor sleep then it needs to be corrected because that is very real as well.
Phoenix