Hello! I would like to warn everyone of an experience my roommate and I have just had, in case I can prevent it happening to anyone else. Or, you know, if anyone knows a lawyer who could advise us.
My roommate has a queen size Nectar mattress. Friday night, she spilled some water on the bed and took the cover off to air dry. She unzipped the cover, and a flame retardant sleeve (that we hadn’t known was there to begin with) made of woven fiberglass began shedding small fiberglass particles. They were airborne. The whole room and everything in it is contaminated, and there are few surfaces elsewhere in the apartment that don’t have at least a little. Nowhere on the mattress’ tags or on the Nectar website does it say there is a fiberglass sleeve. In fact, it makes a big deal of how there are five components: top of cover, three layers of foam, bottom of cover. Nothing about the flame retardant sleeve there. The label on the cover doesn’t say you can’t take it off, just that they suggest you don’t. It does not mention fiberglass as a material found in the mattress at all. The website even has a page explaining that you CAN take off the cover and wash it, if you must, just that they suggest you don’t. No real reasons given. No mention of fiberglass.
Our apartment is sparkly with fiberglass. We have had to drop money on a HEPA filter vacuum that could safely remove some of it, and on new non-permeable mattress covers to contain the worst of the source. We have had to garbage-bag up almost everything in her room. No amount of runs through the laundry seems to get it all out of clothes, and we have to thoroughly wipe out the washer and dryer drums every load. All her pillows were ruined, the chair in her room, her clothing, some expensive bras, a nice area rug, and I’m sure there will be trouble on the horizon with our landlord regarding the carpet, even if we do vacuum it as well as we can.
Lilly has been having nosebleeds, before the mattress was unzipped, but the worst one I’ve seen yet was the one that evening. She’s been sleeping on it almost a year, and it could have begun coming through the fabric cover. Nosebleeds are a sign of fiberglass inhalation.
We have contacted the company, and their response was honestly insulting. We were told that we shouldn’t have taken the mattress cover off to begin with, and that it can no longer be covered by the 365 night guarantee, despite us having had it for under the full year. I have just now, after three days trying, finally spoken to someone willing to look into our case, so here’s hoping we’ll get even a fraction of what we are, frankly, owed.
It really feels like there could be some sort of lawsuit here.
In fact, there is one, with a situation nearly identical to ours but with a different company. This was the first hit when I searched our problem online.
https://topclassactions.com/…/zinus-class-action-says…/
Anyway, if you have a Nectar mattress, don’t ever open the easily accessible warning-label-free zipper! If you have had it under a year, and it’s in its original condition, it can still be returned. If you were planning to get one, maybe don’t! A lot of the foam-mattress-in-a box types have the fiberglass, though most of them disclose the presence of the fiberglass rather than hiding it like a dirty secret. Make sure you do a search for mattresses WITHOUT fiberglass as a flame retardant.
I had to go back and find this post because we just discovered our (Zinus) mattress is leaking fiberglass, and we NEVER removed or even touched the zipper on the cover.
My partner had changed the sheets, and then later while outside we saw that he was covered in shiny fiberglass (like the video above). I remembered this post and immediately knew we had to check the mattress. Sure enough there were glittery fibers EVERYWHERE in the bedroom, all over the floor, sheets & laundry, etc.
We are still trying to figure out just how bad the damage is & how much we need to throw away vs. what can maybe be salvaged.
Again, we NEVER removed the cover. And there is no evidence of the cover having been damaged anywhere.
It just was 3-4 years of regular use and then suddenly, one day while changing the sheets, there was glass everywhere. It’s probably been leaking into our laundry, and likely our bodies, for who knows how long.
Lots of people saying these mattresses are safe as long as you don’t remove the cover - it’s NOT true. Maybe it’s fine for a year or two, but at some point the fibers break down and start to come out THROUGH the cover.
These mattresses are outrageously dangerous & they should not be allowed to keep selling them. Yet they are one of the top selling brands on Amazon…
@thebibliosphere
Jesus Fuck that’s terrifying.
I contacted 24 memory foam mattress manufacturers and asked them which of their mattresses do not contain fiberglass, these are the results:
I found this huge blog post by a guy who mostly does tech stuff. in it, he talks about his attempts to get several mattress companies to tell the truth about their products, and has compiled his results into a nice table. on the subject of nectar, he recommends avoiding the company entirely. they’re shady as shit
Discover the top 9 best mattresses that do not contain fiberglass to buy in 2021 - including those best suited to couples, babies, kids, and
this mile long page is set up as a ranking of The Best Mattresses To Buy In 2021 uwu but it does go in depth about the fiberglass content of each product, and near the bottom it mentioned this interaction with a customer service rep from nectar:
this nectar representative admits to there being fiberglass in the mattress, but don’t worry, it’s the good kind! this author points to nectar specifically for being duplicitous
there was one other interesting thing I found during my search. I’m not going to link it here, and I have no screenshots because I was using an incognito tab (I don’t particularly feel like being peddled nectar mattresses for the next year).
the very first links that come up on google with the prompt “nectar mattress fiberglass” lead to a site called victorianhomesmag. on my first quick scroll through the page, it looked like there was only one mention of fiberglass, which was in the title of the page. “Does Nectar Mattress Have Fiberglass”. that’s a pretty straightforward title, no? but the rest of the page doesn’t answer the question; it just reads like a page that would be titled “Why You Should Buy Our This Mattress”. I did notice that some of the headers for the different sections had odd spaces in them, though. weird, right?
then I used the find in page function to search for the word “fiberglass” and suddenly, when there was only one before, there were five instances of the word! each of them was in those weird empty spaces. I can only assume this is to manipulate search algorithms. again, shady as shit.
one last thing about this page- when I hit the back button, instead of going back to the google results, I got redirected to nectarsleep dot com. there’s a sale going on right now! don’t miss out :3
@thesylversmyth @thebibliosphere
Well that’s just even more skeevy.
Make sure your mattress doesn’t have fiberglass people, your health depends on it
Oh yikes, I had been looking at Nectar Mattresses recently too! I went and checked and Captain Cargoshorts is right. Since I was already in a regular browser I got the screenshots of what cargoshorts was talking about:
It didn’t take me to a sales page when I hit back, but the rest about the site is exactly as the captain reported. Perhaps the sale has ended.
