My Essentia.com False Advertising and Lying to Consumer

[phoenix]

Hi Wilson420,

Thanks for all the great info here about the false claims and so on. Forgive me if it’s been stated in this thread already or in another thread but are there any discussions or answers about how toxic these MyEssentia mattresses are in reality and in what way?

It seems rather clear that these mattresses do off-gas to a noticable extent, as one poster mentioned a sweet vanilla smell which would appear to be toxic… Does anyone else have experience using these beds and what other smells are coming off them after long-term use?

The only reliable way to to assess the “safety” of different materials in more general terms is based on lab tests and the certifications they have for harmful substances and VOCs so that you have some assurance than the VOCs are below the testing limits for the certification (see post #2 here for more information about some of the more reliable “safety” certifications). If the materials in a mattress or the mattress itself has a reliable “safety” certification then for most people they would certainly be “safe enough” … regardless of the type of material or the name of the manufacturer on the label.

The latex in the Essentia mattresses have an Oeko-Tex certification and the glue they use is Greenguard Gold certified but the memory foam they use doesn’t have a specific certification. Having said that … they did test one of their previous mattresses (the Classic Skinny) which contained 2" of their memory foam and according to their test results the testing would pass the Greenguard standards although they don’t mention whether it would have passed the Greenguard Gold standard which is usually used for mattresses.

Assuming that the memory foam they are currently using is the same as the memory foam that was in the Classic Skinny I would consider their mattress to be “safe enough” although they don’t have an actual Greenguard or Greenguard Gold certification and it would be nice to see a more current certification that applied to their current mattresses so that their customers could have more confidence that their current memory foam has a certification that is normally used for mattress materials.

I would also keep in mind that the smell of a material isn’t an indication of whether it is harmful or not because some harmful VOC’s have no smell at all and some VOC’s that are completely safe have a much stronger smell (such as natural rubber, natural wool, or even a rose).

I understand some tests have been done on the foam/rubber/latex or whatever mystery materials they use.

The materials they use certainly aren’t a mystery. Most of their mattresses use a base layer of 100% natural latex with comfort layers that are good quality/density memory foam (not latex).

Outside of the misleading information on their website … the biggest issue with Essentia mattresses isn’t “safety” or durability but that their mattresses are in significantly higher price ranges than other mattresses that use similar types of materials that would also be “safe enough” based on their certifications for harmful substances and VOC’s…

Phoenix