Mattress Forum

Untill then,... we will all just have to keep our guard up!!

For sure good labeling would be a useful government function.  I think the labeling of food products has definitely been beneficial to consumers.   I think the same would apply to mattresses.  Part of making a economy run efficiently and for the benefit of its citizens is to have as much useful information as possible in order to make informed decisions.

I think the mattress companies should be required to divulge to the consumer on a ticket attached to the mattress, the type of springs, the gauge, how many layers of foam or other substances, in what order (bottom to top or vice versa), and what ILD and types of foams are present. I don't really think that would be too much to ask.

The mattress guy who used to come here, Alexander, said people do not really want to know. My argument is that people will LEARN to want to know! I'm sure people didn't really "want to know" what was in their food, at first, either, but now a lot of people care a lot. There are always those who don't care that much. But especially on a big ticket item like this where you spend about 1/3 of your life using it, I think people need to know. And I think memory foam should have to be regulated not to off-gas toxic chemicals. If they can't make it without doing that, then they should be forced to stop making it.

I'm "small government" in many cases, but I think Big Government should sometimes step in, when prudent, to provide knowledge (labeling in this case) and standards to protect the people.

I have started to sell water filter systems and I did a whole lot of research before deciding to do so. What I found out is that there are regulations but the regulations are not strong enough to prevent a lot of unscrupulous manufacturers from making unfounded claims for their filters. But at least there are a couple of non-profit testing services and certification services (one is the NSF - the National Sanitation Foundation), which does idependent lab testing and surprise visits to factories to insure an NSF-Certified For Health Standard 53 filter system does indeed filter the contaminants the company says it does. The military and others use NSF-Certified filters for their water filtering services. I think many other industries could benefit from this type of independent testing and monitoring. For example, some monitoring and certification service - government or independent - should make sure mattresses meet certain standards and divulge what is in their mattresses, and that those claims are honest. The "NMF" (the National Mattress Foundation, we could call it) would allow an NMF Seal only if they honestly divulge the materials in their mattresses and attach that label with the "NMF" seal, to the mattress!

Look at any other major retail product and the competitiveness in the specs and details....go and shop for a car, a TV, a high end reciever for a stereo, a computer, a cell phone, a digital camera, companies are inherently transparent with most of the specs and are always constantly trying to out do each other on it.  The mattress world is sometimes becoming about the specs, but not the same kind of full disclosure, its never the full story, its cherry picked information that is presented to people.  Bottomline is this...if a company does not list publically what their product is, there is a reason they are taking steps to conceal that info...and its not about competitive issues. 

How did we get on this subject from ILD and thicknesses?  What is the conclusion to that question.  Is a 3" 42 ILD latex the same as a 6' 42 ILD????  Because I would rather buy 3" over a 6" anyday.  Easier to move around if you know what I mean

Jim,  I agree with the concept of full disclosure. Sadly I think the only way that is going to happen is if the "S" brands & their lobbiests write the bill.  The "S" brands, a.k.a. "mattress mafia" are self serving weasles just like congress. 

On topic with ILD vs thickness goes, maybe we need to start paying attention to foam density (LB/cu-ft), of latex.  A good portion of the toppers out there are being cut from 6" cores.

ILD/IFD measures the stiffness/firmness of the foam by indicating the amount of pressure requiredto compress a specimen of specific dimensions by a particular fractional depth (typically 25% or 65%). Implicitly the actual depth of compression is dependent on both the thickness of the specimen and the target fraction (e.g. 2%5 of 4" is 1" and 25% of 8" is 2"). Everything else being constant, reducing the thickness of the specimen would effectively reduce the actual target depth but also reduce the volume of material available to resist the applied force. Thus the relationshipis not really linear (there are conversion charts), but effectively the required force is reduced giving a lower measured ILD. It is better to have the dimensions of the specimen used during the test to enable a fair comparison. I dont think the ASTM D 3574 standards of test measurements are mandatory.

Resilience of a foam is measured using the dropped ball test and is a measure of the elasticity/springiness of the foam. Standard PU foam has low resilience, HD is about 30-40%, Lux/Evlon is about 40-50%, HR is about 50-60% and latex is usually greater than 60%.

A related measure is the compression set which measures the amount of 'permanent' deformity after the foam has been under compression for a sustained period. Low values are good and is slightly correlated with resilience and density

Density is probably the most reflective of durability. Denser products (of same material) tend to maintain their specifications longer.