Sleep Essentials requiringing a prescription?

So, I was following a youTube link and came across this mfg touting Latex. Anyways, I went to his Website and there was a reference that you had to get a prescription to order his products . I am kind of scratching my head over the reason why his company insists on having a prescription while other Latex mattress mfrs do not.

-eug

The prescription is needed because there are no fire retardants used in these mattresses. It’s really no big deal - I bought one of those mattresses, the softest latex one they sold, more than a year ago. All I did was have the store email me a copy of the prescription form, that I printed out. I took it to my MD, told him I wanted to buy a mattress without any fire retardant and needed his signature to do so. MD signed the paper, I took it to the store with me and bought my mattress (buying a mattress with a prescription like that also makes the mattress tax exempt, at least in Virginia).

I’m sure some people want a fire retardant, but I’m in my 60s and easily remember a time when mattresses weren’t made with such things, and I’m aware that there are a whole lot of people who are sleeping on mattresses without fire retardant, who have never even thought about it being something they need.

I like the mattress, by the way, and thought at the time that I’d prefer Dunlop more than Talalay. The mattress, soft as it is, left me with pressure point pain until I bought a 3" very low ILD Talalay topper made by Pure Latex Bliss. Since adding the topper, I sleep fine, but without it I was miserable.

Now granted, I’m sleeping on a mattress that I think a lot of people might find too soft, but for me it’s perfect and I have good alignment, no pressure point pain, and look forward to crawling into bed every night.

Hi upticka,

Just to add a little to the information that Claudia posted (thanks Clawdia :)) every mattress sold in the US has to pass the fire regulations (16 CFR 1632 and 1633) and a prototype has to be tested for fire resistance in order to be legally sold in the US. There are many people that are concerned about “chemicals” in their mattress that are used to make them fire resistant so the regulations have an exception that allows people to buy a mattress that hasn’t passed the test with a prescription from a licensed health professional (chiropractor, naturopath, doctor etc). As Clawdia said it’s a very simple matter to get the prescription and they will even supply you with forms that you can take to your health professional.

I would also be aware that there are also “safe” fire retardant methods and many mattresses don’t use “chemicals” to pass the fire regulations (unlike some of the information on the Sleep Essentials site). There is more about the fire regulations and fire retardants in post #4 here and more about safe fire retardant methods in post #2 here.

Phoenix