Trying to find a mattress with no off-gassing, please help!

[phoenix]

Hi Tim,

Understandably, it was a small store, but unfortunately, that made it impossible for me to discern what was creating the odor that was making me ill.

Some people are very sensitive to certain odors whether they are harmful or not and you are certainly not the first person to encounter this. You can read a little more about the smell of latex in post #2 here that may help you identify what you are sensitive to. Depending on the store they may also be able to provide you with a sample of their materials that you can take home with you to see if you are sensitive to one of them in particular. All materials will have some smell and it can also vary from batch to batch or product to product if the material is natural but if I had to guess (and guessing is somewhat dangerous because other people’s experiences or sensitivity to certain smells may not apply to you) I would probably “rank” the likelihood of where the smell you are reacting to may be coming from in order of probability as Dunlop latex (a more rubbery smell), Talalay latex (a “sweeter” smell), wool (a more “musty” smell), and cotton (very little smell).

My other question has to do with memory foam. Although my most immediately noticeable problem seems to be with odors, given my health I would like to also have a mattress that is on the “safer” side in terms of potentially harmful chemicals. I am wondering-- if given the choice between a traditional inner spring mattress with some polyfoam that is not Certipur certified, compared to a memory foam mattress (or memory foam/innerspring hybrid) that is Certipur certified, which one would be considered “safer” from the perspective of noxious or toxic chemicals?

CertiPur is a testing protocol that tests polyfoam and memory foam to certain criteria (see here*) but the testing is based on samples only and there can also be a variance between different batches of the same material. There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that even with CertiPur certified materials that some people may still be sensitive in some cases. It’s also true that a lack of CertiPur certification doesn’t necessarily indicate that a specific material has VOC’s that are more than the CertiPur testing standards or CertiPur certified materials and some materials that aren’t CertiPur certified may have less VOC’s than some that are tested … it’s just that you don’t know. Tempflow for example uses a type of memory foam in their mattresses that have been independently tested for VOC’s and are very low (they will provide the testing results to their customers) even though they aren’t CertiPur certified (see post #9 here). Unfortunately there really isn’t a way to know which material is “safer” or tolerable to you outside of testing results or your own experience. Based on experience and anecdotal evidence … I would say that memory foam is more likely to cause issues than polyfoam which in turn is more likely to cause issues than latex. Natural fibers or innersprings would be the least likely of all. Foam that has gel added to it is probably less likely to cause issues than non gel materials because the gel itself has lower VOC’s but this would also depend on the percentage of gel in the material and all of this is very generic and not specific to any particular foam or batch of foam.

ADMIN NOTE:*Always check CertiPur site for the latest guidelines available

Post #2 here and the posts and sources of information that it links is a good starting point that can help each person answer the question of “how safe is safe enough for me?” but it’s a complex issue that has no clear or definitive answers that apply in every case.

If you know that you are looking at materials that have high odds of being “safe” then samples of the materials may be a good way to find out if you have specific sensitivities to any of the materials they use (or their smell) that a certification may not cover.

Phoenix