Mattress Forum

Please suggest a US retailer. I stay in Dallas, TX. Do you know a local store that carries them to try out?

Another concern is for dust mites. There are conflicting reports of wool being dust mite barrier. Some say it attracts dust mites! My son could be allergic to dust mites too, not sure unless we do an allergy test. What is your recommendation or experience regarding dust mites? Do you recommend a dust mite mattress cover for this organic mattress?

Thanks again.

The claims that wool attracts mites is completely unfounded.  The 'explanation' for this is that they like to live in areas where there is a lot of places to 'hide'...its always memory foam mattress makers that claim BS like this.  Sheeps wool, particularly organic sheeps wool that has not been stripped of the lanolin fat or grease that is in natural wool is incredibly resistant to dust mites living in it. Lanolin is a natural dust mite repellent, as well as moisture repellent.  Wool does not lock in moisture like polyester and polyurethane or memory foam's do.  When we talk about dust mites, odour causing bacteria, mould, etc.  Any micro organism that wants to live in bedding or tops of mattresses want to live there because it is typically a warm and moist environment, wool creats a more arid environment than other materials by easily releasing stored moisture into the environment.  The lower the humidity the less chance there is for anything to grow inside the mattress.  

I am not sure of any retailers in Texas that carry this type of product.  I wish I was more help for you there.

Sincerely,

Christine Chamberlin

Co-founder

The Clean Bedroom

I do not have info about the retailer, but the dust mites I can give some info on:

• Dust mites burrow straight down in their environment
• Dust mites are everywhere
• Most people are not allergic to dust mites (but rather to their feces and exoskeletons after they die)
• When dust mites colonize a bed their entire life-cycle is found in the area so you get it all (some reports have a queen size bed almost doubling in weight over 10 years)
• Dust mites live off of the bacteria on our skin cells (not on our skin cells, which is a common misconception)...

So having said all of that, things that provide natural (not necessarily "green" or organic) resistance to dust mites are things that are a bit higher in acidic content (memory foam and latex are great examples) other things can help prevent colonization by preventing them from burrowing (water proof protective covers, micro fiber, some very tightly wound material (be careful for claims that are unsupported), etc. even some materials like wool can create an unhospitable environment for dust mites thus reducing the speed at which they colonize.

Depending on your desired end result (obviously the health of your son) concerning "green" vs. natural vs. hypo-allergenic your search could go a multitude of directions, but if it is strictly in response the the allergic reaction your son may currently have (becoming allergic over time after the first year or two sounds like someone is trying to create a fear tactic), then I hope some of this info will help concerning the dust mites themselves.

You and your son sleep well DallasMom!
 

Thank you GuyMakesSense!

The memory foam info does makes sense to me, as I have observed that when he sleeps on 2 of our beds with thin memory foam layer on them, he sleeps a little better! However they are also firm beds (rock hard), so I don't know if that is the reason. He suffers the most on a medium bed (soft but not a pillow top) that doesn't have the memory foam layer! All 3 beds are from Simmon's beauty rest and Sterns & Foster, so they are in general better quality beds. However they are still conventional and so must be off-gassing, one of them is a 2008 built (sterns& foster) so it might be conforming to the latest flammability standards. Pity I didn't know about these horrible standards back then!

Still very very confused. There is no way to know if he will develop allergies to latex, or even to wool. Is there a way I could convert the existing firm beds into non-off-gassing beds?

Organic sheeps wool for example is a very safe choice...people have lived with wool for thousands and thousands of years...wool allergies are a fairly new thing in human history...used to be an extremely rare thing to be legitimately allergic to sheeps wool or lanolin.  Now with all the chemical treatments done to standard mass produced wool we have a lot more people claiming allergies or sensitivities to wool.  Peanut allergies share a similar history...after WWII and the widespread use of pesticides and insecticides came into use it changed the way the agricultural industry works almost completely.  Take for instance cotton growing, it is the most heavily sprayed crop in the entire world...the land that normal cotton is grown on after enough time becomes to toxic that you can hardly grow anything in it anymore.  But you can grow peanuts, and they just leach most of the chemicals out of the soil.  Now we have tons of people that are allergic to peanuts.