It seems that all the conversations I’ve seen about the flame retardant materials in mattresses covers have been about options that avoid it, have a natural alternative (wool), or questions about the risk. Following the links to the member sites, it appears that their covers are natural and/or fire retardant free. For the most part, I agree that those covers are a good options and I completely understand wanting to avoid added chemical exposure. I am, however, wondering if there are solid options for covers that pass the regulatory tests but don’t have wool? I realize that means silica or chemical treatment but I would think there are some people who still want these covers.
Hi colorfinger,
Mattress covers aren’t tested for flame retardancy by themselves because the fire regulations require that the complete mattress is tested … not just a cover or any individual component. Different types of mattresses with different designs or materials may need different types of covers to pass the regulations so a mattress that passes with one type of cover may fail with a different cover.
Having said that … some of the better sources for individual covers that I’m aware of (with and without wool) … most of which have some type of fire retardant barrier (most of them are used with mattresses that have passed the regulations)… are included in the component post here.
Phoenix
I’m not entirely sure if this qualifies, but there’s a company called Mattress Safe that makes a couple of covers that claim to be flame retardant. They’re sold as bed bug covers, most are waterproof to some degree…either the top, 3/4 the way down the side, or all the way around. The two different versions are Sofcover and Kleencover. From speaking with the company, I think the difference is country of origin, Kleencover are less expensive and imported, Sofcover are made in the usa. They claim to be soft and breathable, some are skirted like a fitted sheet, others are full enclosure with a zipper. I happened to be checking them out as an option for myself, but haven’t had personal experience with them yet.
According to their website - “Mattress Safe® is proud to feature fire retardancy as a vital feature of our laminated fabric. Tested by the National Fire Protection Agency and Passing the Cigarette Burn Test - CFR Title 16 Part 1632 (FF4-72) Standard for Flammability.” I don’t know if this is the same test required for newer mattresses, but it’s something.
http://www.mattresssafe.com/Sofcover-Superior-Mattress-Encasement-p/superior.htm
hope this helps… if I’m not mistaken, they run in the neighborhood of $60-80 for a queen.
Thanks for the link Brass. That is along the lines of what I was thinking. Not sure I’m going to go the fire retardant route but when i was looking at the covers linked by Phoenix (a great resource), I noticed none of them talked about the fire retardants unless they specifically were saying they didn’t have them. I found it odd but now that Phoenix has pointed out they only test the whole mattress, I am remembering that he had that in another post which talked about them requiring two mattresses to be tested independently for the blow torch test and the cig test. So it makes sense that they don’t advertise that the cover itself passes the test because it is so heavily dependent on what is below the cover too.
Companies like mattresses.net (Arizona Premium Mattress I think), have explicit warnings to people for liability reasons. Some people prefer the fire safety, others prefer the organics without (usually) harsh chemicals. A lot of protective gear, whether clothing or bedding relies on chemicals to offer the protection they’re trying to achieve. I’ve seen a few examples of burn tests and mattress fires and they’re nasty for sure. Even the chemicals don’t seem to offer fire proofing, rather delaying the burn to make getting to safety more likely.
You might want to contact that company I linked to and ask what they use or how they provide fire retarding of the covers since I’m not sure what chemicals they use. In no way do I think those covers are necessarily ‘healthy’ or attempting to be in terms of being chemical free. Don’t want anyone getting the wrong impression that they’re a solution to organic fire protection.
It’s hard to promote either camp of thought since both make good points. No one wants to burn up, but no one wants to breath in asbestos or whatever nasty chemicals are providing the safety. I think that’s why wool is sort of middle of the road, I don’t know the specific temps it can withstand but it is inherently burn resistant to some degree and it’s natural. Many times companies are held to some sort of responsibility when things go wrong for consumers, so they’re saving their own behinds with bold disclaimers and can’t say I blame them. Especially when so many lawsuits seem to continue without common sense factored in. One or two major suits against smaller companies can ruin them. (i’m sure someone’s tried suing Bic for burning themselves with a lighter when the device’s sole purpose is to produce a flame).
Hi colorfinger,
Just for the sake of clarity … the encasements that Brass linked aren’t meant to be used as a mattress cover. They are both mattress encasements that are meant to go around a mattress that already has a cover. They aren’t a cover that a mattress manufacturer would use as the cover for their mattress.
16 CFR 1632 is the smoldering test that is one of the two tests that a mattress has to pass (the cigarette smoldering test). The other one is 16 CFR 1633 which is the blowtorch test.
It’s somewhat misleading for a manufacturer to say that a mattress encasement by itself has passed 16 CFR 1632 without specifying the mattress that it passed with. They say it’s classified as a class B cover which means that it could be substituted for another Class B or Class C cover (but not a class A cover). As you can see here
[quote]Class A represents
tickings evaluated as acting as barriers
against cigarette ignition; Class B rep-
resents tickings evaluated as having no
effect on cigarette ignition; and Class
C represents tickings evaluated as hav-
ing the potential, in some manner, to
act as a contributor to cigarette igni-
tion. [/quote]
a Class B cover is one that has no effect on cigarette ignition.
Phoenix
Thanks Phoenix, I didn’t know all the specifics of the burn test categories. I just knew in my searching that they passed at least some sort of test, which most protectors don’t bother advertising one way or the other. And you’re right, they’re sold primarily as protectors, not encasements like tickings, for the purpose of bedbug/allergen/waterproofing - similar to protect-a-bed, malouf encase, that sort of thing. I was thinking most people want to protect their mattress from spills, sweat etc, or against chance of bed bugs to begin with. Having some level of fire protection (which wasn’t overly clear) was an added bonus to mattresses or covers which don’t have any form of protection (other than maybe wool incorporated) but that are noted don’t pass regulations for the new mattresses after what was it, 2007?
Phoenix, maybe I’m wrong but I was looking at burn test info from cornell.edu and it outlines that both “A” and “B” pass the cigarette smoldering test. “C” does not. “A” is testing the material in 3 different locations directly against a cotton covered box (test apparatus I’m sure), “B” is testing the material with 1/4" (+ or - 1/32") urethane foam between the material and cotton covered box.
here’s the link I found: 16 CFR § 1632.6 - Ticking substitution procedure. | Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (e-CFR) | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
excerpt from the link on test classes:
“(4) Ticking classification. A ticking prototype is classified as Class A, Class B, or Class C, in accordance with the following schedules.
(i) Class A—A ticking prototype is classified as Class A when three specimens, tested in accordance with § 1632.6(e), meet the test criterion in § 1632.6(d)(2) when the ticking is tested directly over the cotton felt on the test box.
(ii) Class B—A ticking prototype is classified as Class B when three specimens, tested according to § 1632.6(e), meet the test criterion in § 1632.6(d)(2) when the ticking is tested on a 1/4 inch ±1/32 inch (6.3 mm ±.8 mm) thick urethane foam pad covering the cotton felt on the test box.
(iii) Class C—A ticking prototype is classified as Class C when any specimen tested according to § 1632.6(e), fails to meet the test criterion in § 1632.6(d)(2) when the ticking is tested on a 1/4 inch ±1/32 inch (6.3 mm ±.8 mm) thick urethane foam pad covering the cotton felt on the test box.”
Hi brass,
You are probably getting into more technical details than are meaningful or necessary and the regulations can be quite complex. The independent testing for the covers that determines which class they belong to (and these are independent of the mattress testing) are used to determine whether a manufacturer can exchange one cover for another without having to test another prototype. Regardless of which class of cover is used the mattress “as a whole” still has to pass both 16 CFR 1632 and 16 CFR 1633 regardless of which class of ticking it uses. If the mattress passes and then the manufacturer decides to change the design then they can substitute a cover for another one according to the “rules” that are outlined in 16 CFR 1632.6 but these are also different from 16 CFR 1633. In other words … the testing criteria you linked are used to test covers only for the purposes of their classification. A mattress can still pass the regulations even without a cover that has been classified but the cover can’t be substituted for a different one.
The test criteria for classifying covers that you linked are the ones that are described in 16 CFR 1632.6. The general “effect” of this testing is also described in the same section using the wording that I linked and the test criteria basically boils down to classifying covers as either having a positive (class A), neutral (class B ) or negative (class C) effect on fire retardancy.
16 CFR 1633 doesn’t have the same equivalency testing for ticking as 16 CFR 1632 (see the information in reply to question #2 here) so there is no specific criteria for substitution.
For those who are interested the complete regulations for 16 CFR 1632 are here and the regulations for 16 CFR 1633 are here but this really isn’t all that relevant to the topic here because a manufacturer wouldn’t likely use a mattress encasement that was designed for a different function (in this case to protect against bed bugs or dust mites or other allergens) as a cover for their mattress … whether it passed the classification regulations or not.
Phoenix