I’m buying some latex foam for a bed and got this through a local company in Albany, CA. It’s a 6 inch mattress core made by latexgreen.com. It has Oekto-Tex Standard 100 certification (class 1) - or at least there is a tag that says “confidence in textiles” and says it was tested for harmful substances according to oekto. It’s distributed by sleepcomp / latexco.
Does anyone know if I can trust this manufacturer - both to make sure that they use natural latex, doesn’t have fire retardants and has been washed enough to get rid of any chemicals used in the creation? I know Phoenix has written about them before, but I can’t find good information on chemical use, washing, etc.
Oh, and re fire retardants, I know this isn’t a wool top and not sure how they are doing that from a fire safety perspective as they say they also have fire retardant cores. Are those separate if you want that or do all of their mattresses have fire retardants (not sure how they would get an OEKO-Tex cert however http://latexgreen.com/fr.html
Also on their site it says they are oeko certified but not on oeko’s site. And, they say they have flame retardant cores - does that mean all of them have flame retardants or only some of their mattresses?
Latex Green makes Dunlop latex cores that are very high quality and are a common choice for the Dunlop latex used by many high quality latex mattress manufacturers including several of the manufacturers that are members of this site. They are also one of three Dunlop manufacturers that also makes latex cores that are also certified organic (see post #2 here).
While the Latex Green cores themselves don’t contain fire retardants … the mattresses that use them do need to pass the fire regulations (CFR 16 part 1632 and part 1633) to be sold without a prescription in the US so the manufacturer would have some type of fire barrier in the mattress. I don’t know the specifics of the mattress you are looking at but there is more about different types of “safe” fire barriers in this article and in post #2 here and more about fire barriers and “safe” materials in general in post #4 here.
Thanks Phoenix. I was actually talking about the cores themselves. Latexgreen says they make fire retardant cores and puts them on their site here http://latexgreen.com/fr.html.
But, they also have other cores on their site http://latexgreen.com/cores.html, and wanted to make sure these are sans FR. In other words are the FR cores they advertise on their site different than their normal cores or do all their cores have FR.
I know you said above that their cores don’t have FR and so a diff type of fire barrier would be necessary, but again, Latex green advertises FR cores.
Oh, and I’m actually just getting a core from them and then putting a wool cover, etc. over it.
I should have clarified … I’ve never seen any of their fire retardant cores in North America and I don’t know of any manufacturer that uses them although it’s certainly possible that they are inside a mattress that I’m not aware of.
Their “regular” cores don’t have any fire retardant chemicals.
Latex Green doesn’t sell their latex cores “one off” to consumers although they are available from some of the suppliers that are listed in the component post here. The same list includes some of the better sources for covers that I’m aware of.
I’m not sure if their FR latex is Oeko-tex certified or not but I don’t know of any supplier in North America that would be selling it and I think it would be safe to assume that it would be their “regular” non FR latex unless it specifies otherwise on the label. The dealer you are buying it from should know which version they are selling though so they would be the most reliable source of information about any products they are selling.
