Seeking advice on mattress for a 7-year-old boy.

I’m buying a mattress for my 7-year-old son. I’m looking at a Sterns& Foster Suzette Ultra Firm full size mattress carried by us-mattress.com. Its description link is here: http://www.us-mattress.com/stearns-suzette-ultrafirm-full.html.

My main concern is how risky the foams in the quilt and comfort layer are for a 7-year-old boy. I mean the chemicals and gases from the foams. And are there any other possible issues with this mattress?

The following is directly copied from us-mattress.com:

Quilt - Top of Mattress

Silk-infused cover
FlameGuard Fiber
.5" HD High Performance Foam
.5 oz fiber
1" Hypersoft ®
Comfort - Padding Layers

1" HD Foam
1" Marvelux
.5" Memory Foam

Thanks a lot for any comments and suggestions.

Gene

Hi aggene,

I think that only each of us individually can really answer the complex question of “how safe is safe enough” for each of us. There is a great deal of information linked in post #2 here about safe, green, natural, and organic materials so you can decide which parts of these complex issues are the most important to you based on fact instead of misinformation. Some people are sensitive enough to react to polyfoam even that was made in the US (foam from China is a much more common source of VOC’s) which most people would generally consider to be “safe”. There are also others who would avoid polyfoam completely because they don’t wish to take what they consider to be the risk of sleeping on it or even for environmental reasons. Others yet focus on more natural materials for their children because they believe they may not yet be as prepared to deal with lower levels of questionable materials and they are in close contact with these materials for many hours every day. Which part of the spectrum each of us is most comfortable with is really a personal choice that is made for many different reasons.

Post #2 here has links to most of the better posts in the forum about children and mattresses including some good information about what to look for, what to avoid, and some good sources that should be very helpful.

In most cases I would suggest reading post #1 here as a starting point because it links to all the basic information that people need when they are starting to look for a mattress but since this is for your child and not for you then it may be worthwhile to just read these guidelines which will help you avoid the worst choices and suggests avoiding all the major brands (including Sealy/Stearns & Foster) or any mattress where you aren’t able to find out the details of all the layers and materials in the mattress. Mattresses don’t have to be a blind purchase and if you put any time and energy into trying to make meaningful evaluations about the quality or value of the major brands you will reach nothing but dead ends and frustration because they won’t disclose any meaningful information about what is in their mattresses.

That’s probably an hour or two of reading but I believe it will be well worth it and lead to much better choices that have much better quality and value no matter how you may define it.

Phoenix