One of the biggest complaints by owners of memory foam pillows and mattresses is the unpleasant, and potentially unhealthy chemical smell. Memory foam is manufactured using polyurethane and several other chemicals, so it isn’t surprising that it emits a chemical odor. This “off gassing” of volatile organic compounds is a common and well-documented property of memory foam pillows and mattresses. The fumes are often compared to those experienced in a freshly painted room. If you are experiencing this odor, the good news is you may not have to endure the smell for long. The bad news is that some of the chemicals used in memory foam aren’t entirely benign.Many memory foam mattress owners report that the off gassing period ends after a number of days.(1) Of course there are many factors which influence this including the product, the type of foam, the sensitivity of the person, the room ventilation and more. Even if the initial odor goes away, it is natural to wonder if there are health issues related to off gassing.
Most people do not report any health issues resulting from their memory foam pillow or mattress. However, there are various reports of headaches, nausea, and allergic reactions resulting from the odor produced by memory foam. If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, you’ll want to avoid sleeping on the foam during the initial off gassing period. You can leave the pillow or mattress in a well-ventilated area for a week or two and see if that helps eliminate or reduce the odor and symptoms. If after several weeks, the issue persists, it is probably time to consider an alternative to memory foam.Many many people use memory foam products without reporting any side effects or related health issues. That said, there are various reports and studies which indicate that memory foam may be somewhat toxic. Reports include carcinogenic chemicals and formaldehyde gas. To manufacture memory foam, chemicals are added to polyurethane to make it more dense and viscous at the same time. Additional chemicals are required to make the polyurethane flame retardant.
One of these, Pentabde (of the polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) family), was used until 2004. Pentabde is now known to be toxic to the liver, thyroid, and nervous system.(2) A study in 2000 specifically found mattress emissions to be toxic to the lungs of labratory mice.The long-term effects of memory foam and its toxicity is not fully understood, but there clearly is some reason for concern. Aproximately one-third of your life is spent in close contact to your sleeping surface, so it is important to consider you and your family’s health when selecting a pillow or mattress.Are you interested in the support and comfort provided by memory foam, but want to avoid that chemical smell? There are several natural pillow options for those looking for a new pillow. Of course, our favorite is our buckwheat hull pillow. Besides being natural and chemical-free, buckwheat pillows are a great alternative to memory foam for a couple of other reasons.Memory foam is not breathable and this can result in a hot and sweaty pillow.
The shape and particulate nature of buckwhat hulls leaves a lot of air space in your pillow between all of the hulls. This airspace allows warm moist air to escape, leaving your pillow cool and dry.While a memory foam pillow conforms to the shape of your head, the overall shape and thickness of the pillow is fixed, making the pillow less adaptable to your sleeping position. The fill in a stuffed pillow can be shifted and adjusted for a wider variety of shapes and sizes.If you’ve decided against a memory foam pillow and a buckwheat pillow isn’t right for you, other natural alternatives to memory foam include pillows filled with down, cotton, wool, latex, kapok or millet hulls.It’s so tasty on the top of a latte. And so comfy in a mattress. All these new ordered-online, shipped-to-your-house mattresses are made of some kind of foam. They have to be, so they fit into that smallish box they’re shipped in. Just like almost every other substance on the planet, polyurethane foam off-gasses, or releases compounds into the air.
Yes, you breathe in these compounds when you sleep on these mattresses. But no, they’re not going to hurt you. Many of these compounds can be nasty and cause health problems in high volume, but the amounts your mattress exhales are pretty small, and they get even smaller over time. (Many other household sources, such as laminate flooring, emit these compounds.) The companies that make the mattresses we’ve tested and selected as the best at Sweethome have their polyurethane foam independently tested and verified by a company called CertiPUR-US to ensure that the amount their foam off-gasses is below CertiPUR-US’s standards. We’ll get to what comes off a new foam mattress and why in a minute, but first, let’s talk polymerization reactions. Polyurethane foam comes in many different kinds, and it’s in tons of stuff. Flexible polyurethane foam, the kind that’s in online-ordered mattresses, is also in car upholstery, couches, kids’ car seats, home insulation, yadda yadda.
You can make polyurethane foam pretty easily—generically, it’s the reaction between polyols (alcohols with multiple -OH groups) and diisocyanates. These two compounds come together to make urethane linkages and make long molecules that repeat over and over—poly (many) urethanes. The compounds that float off polyurethane (and many other sources) are generally known as VOCs or volatile organic compounds—“volatile” meaning they float through the air easily, and “organic” as in they contain carbon (not “organic farming” organic). The EPA’s definition of a VOC is somewhat dizzying, and the agency doesn’t actually regulate VOCs in household products. The specific VOCs that can come off of foam mattress vary a lot: tiny amounts of unreacted polyol or diisocyanate, the catalyst 2-ethyl-hexanoic acid, or toluene. Many others can come off, as well. Different places or stages in making a mattress can introduce VOCs, and the VOCs can vary for each batch of foam. CertiPUR-US tested the flexible polyurethane foam in all three of our mattress picks by letting the foam sit in a chamber for three days with air blowing over it, and then taking samples of the chamber’s air.
CertiPUR-US has established standards for emissions and content for foam products, including an upper limit on total VOCs of 0.5 parts per million (ppm). CertiPUR-US’s technical document outlines this in great technical detail. (Note: Michael Crowell, CertiPUR-US’s executive director, pointed out to me several times in an email that CertiPUR-US does not test the whole mattress, just the polyurethane foam. It also doesn’t test latex foam, which is part of Casper’s mattresses.) CertiPUR-US derives its limits “from a number of sources including the EPA, CPSC, REACH, and RoHS,” Crowell told me in an email.1 For example, a cube of polyurethane foam should not give off more than 0.16 ppm of benzene after 72 hours to get the CertiPUR-US seal.2 (For reference, OSHA’s benzene limit is 1 ppm over an eight-hour workday.) For toluene, another likely VOC, CertiPUR-US’s limit is 0.13 ppm (OSHA’s limit is 200 ppm over eight hours). Our recent pick for the best online mattress for most people, the Leesa, is made of three foam layers, and the bottom two layers are polyurethane foam.
The other two mattress picks, the Casper and the Tuft & Needle, are also mostly made of polyurethane foam; the Casper has a layer of latex foam on top. The foam in all three mattresses passed CertiPUR-US’s tests and have its seal of approval. So, these VOC limits are for adults, but what about for infants? Sleeping with a baby on a mattress you desperately ordered online at 2 a.m. is certainly a thing. Babies spend many more hours a day sleeping and so have a larger window for potential exposure to VOCs, say the authors of a 2014 study on the VOCs emitted from crib mattresses. The study found that VOCs coming from polyurethane crib mattresses at room temperature were about the same level as VOCs coming from other indoor emitters, such as laminate flooring. Some studies have linked high levels of some VOCs, such as benzene and toluene, to increased risk of asthma and allergies in some young kids. Keep in mind that CertiPUR-US’s limits for VOCs coming off of foam are basically after it let the foam air out for three days.
If you have a vacuum-packed mattress shipped to you, you also can air it out. The authors of the crib mattress study measured the VOCs in new mattresses and in mattresses around five years old and found that the levels of VOCs in polyurethane foam do decrease over time. Kevin Purdy, who wrote the online mattress guide, told me that the mattresses did stink pretty consistently right after he took them out of their boxes. Kind of like a new car smell, he said. The smell was still quite strong after a day (like, smell it through the sheets strong), a lot less stinky by the second day, and pretty much gone by the third or fourth day. So maybe leaving your new mattress in a room with some airflow for a few days is a decent idea. Get rid of the stink, and probably some VOCs too. When a source of light moves toward you, its waves are compressed and pushed to a higher energy. We can’t always see this blue shift, but it’s there. In the space of Internet science, there’s a lot of bad information floating around.