Hi Fitz,
CertiPur (or another reliable certification) with Chinese or Asian foams are certainly important and a step in the right direction but there are also other things that I would personally take into account. For me … Chinese foams and mattresses have a higher bar to measure up to than North American manufacturers for many reasons because there is much more uncertainty about foam quality and durability and there are many ways to cheapen a mattress or produce a lower quality material and then add a story to it that “sounds good”. It’s also more difficult to validate any claims that are being made.
In the case of both SilverRest and Lucid … I would insist on complete transparency and knowing the accurate foam density of every layer in the mattress … not just the top layer. In some cases you will find higher quality foam in say the top 2" but then lower quality foam (such as 3 lb memory foam) in the layers immediately below this. I would also need to trust that they are providing me with accurate information and not just information that they wanted me to believe. You can see a few examples of some “cheap” memory foam mattresses where the listed specs don’t appear to be accurate in post #4 here and post #2 here (which include Lucid and SilverRest). While Lucid and Linenspa are listed on the CertiPur site (to their credit) … SilverRest isn’t (ADDED: they are now listed as CertiPUR certified).
Besides just the minimum guidelines … when you are dealing with a Chinese manufacturer there are also other factors that can influence or affect the quality of the materials.
One of these is how long the mattress or a foam has been compressed in between its manufacturing and its final sale to a consumer. Foams that are compressed for longer than 30 days or so in shipping and storage can reduce the durability of the materials.
Foam additives are also an issue that I would also be cautious with. When you see “green tea” or “bamboo charcoal” added to a foam there is no way to really know how this affects the quality or the final density of the foam. A foam that has a 3 lb polymer density for example (and polymer density or “pure” density is the main factor in durability) may end up having a final density of 4 lbs when you add a filler or any other heavier material to the foam. Both of these are used to mask the smell of memory foam. While there is good evidence of charcoal (activated carbon) being able to absorb chemicals and VOC’s to a point … even carbon air filters that have much higher levels of activated carbon need to be replaced fairly frequently (see here as an example). How much of the density of a memory foam that uses it is from the memory foam itself and how much is “false density” because of the charcoal that has been added (which can reduce durability and can make the mattress foam stiffer and less responsive)? How do you replace the charcoal in a mattress when it quickly becomes saturated with the chemicals or VOC’s it is designed to absorb?
Green tea is also used to counteract the smell of memory foam and is added to the mattress as a powder. It is an indication of a mattress brand made by Zinus (they produce many brands). While it is usually added in an amount of 2% or so (see the patent information here) … this is still a filler with a story attached, certainly doesn’t add to the durability of the memory foam, and I would question whether it has any other real benefit beside just covering up an odor.
In the world of mattresses … there are cases where you get what you pay for, where you get more than you pay for, and where you get less than you pay for (sometimes much less). Helping to identify mattresses that are in the last group (where you get less than you pay for) are one of the goals of the site so people can have some level of confidence that they are getting what they pay for or preferably more than they are paying for compared to other choices they may have.
There are generally three groups where there are many mattresses where you get less than you pay for.
One of these is mainstream mattresses or any mattress manufacturer which doesn’t disclose the quality of all their materials and components or which uses lower quality materials.
The second group includes some of the so called “organic” manufacturers which have a “story” attached to them which is not always accurate or is misleading and which often carries a high premium compared to other mattresses that use the same or very similar materials but with a more “accurate” story that don’t have the same “premium” attached and are more focused on “fair value” than on the story.
Finally there are the manufacturers that are involved in the “race to the bottom” where price is everything and quality means little to nothing and they will often mislabel their products or make misleading claims that just aren’t accurate in an effort to sell cheap mattresses … often of Chinese origin. In many cases it’s very difficult to trust the credibility of the information they provide because they can say anything they want and in most cases there is no way to validate the information they are providing. You can’t just call China and find out accurate information and there is a higher risk that what you are being told isn’t accurate.
Of course quality is quality no matter where a foam or component is manufactured, and there are certainly high quality foams being manufactured in China and other countries around the world (along with a lot of “cheap junk”)… but for me when you are dealing with materials or mattresses where the claims are more difficult to verify or manufacturing standards as a whole are lower … I take a little more critical look and the “prove it to me” questions become more important.
Phoenix