There are a number of sites warning of Memory Foam and health risks with certain chemicals used in their manufacture. With most man made materials there are a number of synthetic materials many of which will be present in your home and as always we want to provide you with the facts to make an informed decision.
There are some other chemicals which are subject to debate about the safety and volatility of them being present in a mattress. The following are frequently cited.
- Acetone
- Dimethylformamide
- Toulene
- Methylene diphenyl diisocyanate
- Methyl chloroform
An excellent resource for a more detailed explanation can be found here.
http://www.beded.org/what-is-in-a-Memory-foam-mattress/
Our position is that Memory Foam has been around for over 20 years and whilst there are complaints about side effects from some of the chemicals off-gassing the majority of users report no complaints. The same chemicals are present in car seats, sofas, household plastics etc. If you are concerned then our advice would be to opt for a natural pocket sprung mattress or a Natural Latex bed, but there are price considerations. For further information of off-gassing please follow this link for a detailed account so you can make your own mind up.
For a further review of Memory Foams structure here is a link to one example of a data sheet for the more scientific of our viewers!
http://Memoryfoamreviews.com/private/Memory-foam-material-safety-data-sheet-msds/
Sam
I find memory foam really hot what can I do to reduce the temperature, I’ve read about coolmax helping?
Thanks Sam for your comment. Unfortunately memory foam does make some sleepers really hot. Whilst you can change the tog of your duvet and control radiator temperatures this is as far as you can go. Whilst there are high wicking fabrics out there, even a coolmax cover won’t remove the heat from your mattress. Ideally a traditional or latex mattress is the only way to reduce heat. – Lee
David H
I’ve had a memory foam mattress for about 14 months now from an online discount bed store, I won’t name them for fear of dropping you or them in it but its one of the big memory foam online stores. At first it was great, it has 2.5cm of memory foam and a foam support base, not sure what the foam there is to be honest! Any way- after 6 months I noticed that the foam was starting to show signs of sagging like it had been crushed some what. Now 14 months on its turned almost like a lumpy porridge feel and is incredibly uncomfortable. It was £169 in the sale. I’m 15 stone and I don’t want to spend a lot on just a mattress, I’m wondering what you recommend I do with this mattress whether or not to try and take it back? David
Hi David. Many thanks for not naming and shaming, whilst we provide honest advice we certainly don’t like to throw stones at others. What I can say is that the mattress you have described is a very cheap low quality mattress, which is what you would expect for the amount you paid for it. 2.5cm of memory foam is too low to recover from what we call compression. Compression means that any foam can compress upto 2cm in its lifetime, some more but 2cm is usually the bench mark. This means that over time the foam will compress, you can’t avoid this. With cheaper memory foam in thin layers it means once its compressed your left with pretty much nothing to work with for your comfort layer. For the price though I’m not sure how you could get more as its pretty much on the money for that amount I’m afraid. Given your weight I would always advise a deeper mattress to accommodate this.
You’ve also mentioned it now feels like porridge. There’s a big white elephant when it comes to memory foam, that all foams are equal. They are not. At the cheaper end of the market, and sometimes even at the higher end, you will find memory foams are being imported from the far east which are not of the same quality as the UK made foams. They don’t meet the same criteria, sometimes they dont meet fire regulations and the batches I’ve seen certainly don’t resemble quality memory foam. British Vita for example are one of the UK’s best foam manufacturers and their products are of the highest quality and completely compliant. Due to this all our memory foam comes from them and them only. The density and resilience of the foam is also incredibly important. Cheaper imported foams simply are not as durable.
In terms of the guarantee I’d get in touch with the shop you bought it from online if you want to follow that route. Usually bed retailers use a proportional guarantee, ie if found to have failed you get a proportion of whats left of the beds life, ie if you’ve had it 2 years and its guaranteed for 5 you get 3 years proportional cost back. We however dont like this approach, our guarantee is much more simple. If the bed fails we will either repair or replace, no mathematical equations or proportions.
Given your budget limitation what I would do is try and get a deeper memory foam mattress layer, have a look at our Genesis to get an idea of the kind of depths. Then I would buy a separate memory foam topper so you can replace this over time rather than the entire bed. I know its an old adage but sometimes you really do get what you pay for. I understand you don’t want to pay a lot for your mattress, but you need to balance this budget against comfort, maybe realising that buying cheap will lead to buying twice or putting up with discomfort I’m afraid!
Hope that helps – Lee