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If you’re looking for an affordable mattress, you might be concerned about fiberglass. This is not a misplaced fear, as many affordable mattresses contain this cheap and potentially dangerous fire retardant. However, the good news is that Novilla isn’t one of them. Fiberglass Gypsum Ceiling Roving
Novilla is an affordable mattress brand that offers memory foam and hybrid mattresses in the $200 to $600 range. These mattresses feature CertiPUR-US certification, a 10-year warranty, a 100-night sleep trial, and free shipping on both orders and returns.
This lets consumers know Novilla stands behind the quality of their products. Best of all, their mattresses don’t contain any fiberglass flame retardants.
Fiberglass is a specialized type of reinforced plastic that contains glass shards. These microscopic glass particles make the plastic sturdier and more durable without compromising its flexibility.
Fiberglass is an extremely common industrial material that can appear in everything from construction materials to automotive parts and even sporting equipment. Probably a lot of the things in your house and car are made using fiberglass.
The versatility of fiberglass extends even to fiberglass fabric. Fiberglass can be stretched into yarn and woven into a cloth known as glass cloth. Glass cloth socks are often found in cheap mattresses as a way to meet fire safety standards.
You may not know it, but you’re actually sleeping on a highly flammable piece of furniture. Mattresses contain many different components that are extremely combustible. This is especially true of synthetic foams and fabrics. For this reason, mattresses made in the US are required by law to contain ingredients that can suppress a fire.
There are several flame retardants common in mattresses, but fiberglass is the cheapest. Manufacturers use fiberglass socks directly under the cover of their mattresses to create a barrier against fire because fiberglass cannot ignite. Rather, it melts when exposed to heat and creates a barrier that prevents the flammable ingredients underneath from bursting into flame.
There are several health threats present in fiberglass mattresses. Mattresses containing fiberglass can expose you to tiny glass shards as they make their way through the cover. These glass shards may work their way upwards as you move around on the mattress. Once they’re free, it’s hard to clean up fiberglass from a mattress.
What’s even worse is mattresses that are rolled into a box can often be covered in fiberglass right out of the gate because being rolled and crushed into a tiny box can damage the fiberglass sock inside the mattress.
If your mattress is exposing you to tiny glass shards from its fiberglass fire barrier, you could have a whole host of symptoms. The tiny glass shards make microscopic cuts wherever they touch you.
If they get in your eyes, they can cause eye irritation and dry eye symptoms. If they get on your skin, you may experience skin rashes.
And if you breathe them in, they can irritate your airways and even cause chronic lung infections. This is why you should avoid mattresses containing fiberglass whenever possible.
The only benefit to having fiberglass inside a mattress is that it’s a cheap flame retardant. Having this material inside a mattress can help shave a few dollars off its price.
This is why many mattresses marketed as affordable contain fiberglass. But when you factor in all the health problems that can cause, it really isn’t worth saving a few bucks, especially when there are plenty of alternatives that aren’t that much more expensive.
SEE ALSO: Best Mattresses Under $1000
There are several materials that are just as good, if not better, than fiberglass at preventing fire, and they don’t have the potential health hazards of this industrial material. Natural materials that can prevent fire include silk, wool, thistle, and other plant-based fabrics. There’s also a synthetic silica-based fabric that is not nearly as hazardous to sleepers’ health as fiberglass.
Wool is one of the most common and among the best fire barriers for mattresses, particularly eco-friendly mattresses. Wool is naturally incombustible. It’s very difficult to ignite wool without some kind of accelerant.
Even if wool does manage to ignite, it can often smother flame internally, which can slow or even stall the spread of fire. Best of all, wool poses no threat to anyone’s health, and it can even increase the comfort of your sleep surface.
SEE ALSO: Best Mattresses Without Fiberglass
Mattresses are required by law to list all of their ingredients so that the consumer can know exactly what’s in them. A mattress should come with some sort of label that tells you whether or not it contains fiberglass and the percentage of fiberglass inside the mattress.
If you buy a used mattress or have lost your mattress’s label, look at the tag on the cover. Often, mattress covers have care tags on them that give instructions on how to care for them. If you read the mattress tag and see it prohibits removing the cover, it’s possibly because there’s fiberglass underneath it.
You can also do research and see what mattress brands have been called out by customers for fiberglass inside their mattresses. Some mattress companies that have been include:
SEE ALSO: How to Clean a Mattress
Novilla is a middle-of-the-road mattress brand. They offer plenty of good features, like gel memory foam, edge support technologies, pocketed coils, sturdy base foams, and bamboo rayon fiber covers. All these features can make for a comfortable and pleasant sleep experience.
Though Novilla does not feature any fancy bells and whistles, its budget-friendly mattresses are good-quality and safe. If you’re looking for an affordable mattress that will offer you everything you need for a great night’s sleep, a Novilla mattress could be for you.
Other mattress brands that do not use fiberglass and are worth consideration include:
The short answer is no. There are no benefits to having fiberglass inside a mattress. Fiberglass is the cheapest flame retardant available to the mattress industry. This means they often use it as a way to cut costs for mattresses marketed as affordable.
However, cost-cutting is virtually the only upside to putting fiberglass inside a mattress. Considering the fact that there are alternatives to fiberglass that are much better and not that much more expensive, there’s really no reason to have it inside something that can so easily expose you to this harmful substance.
Fiberglass inside a mattress probably isn’t going to kill you. However, there are serious risks of long-term health issues associated with fiberglass exposure. When fiberglass comes into contact with your skin, eyes, or airways, it leaves tiny microscopic cuts all over them.
As you can imagine, this can seriously injure your eyes, and it can also leave you with chronic skin rashes and lung infections. There are also some who suggest that fiberglass could be carcinogenic, although this has not been definitively proven.
There are lots of natural fabrics that can be used as fire retardants inside organic mattresses. Silk, thistle, wool, and other plant-based fabrics are all in use as fire barriers that meet safety regulations. Vegan mattresses often use some sort of natural plant-based viscose. Meanwhile, natural mattresses almost always use wool.
Wool is among the best fire barriers, natural or not. This naturally incombustible material is very difficult to ignite, and it also makes it almost impossible for fire to spread inside it. In addition to being an amazing fire barrier, wool can also add another layer of pressure relief and breathability to a latex mattress. This increases its comfort even more than just a cover alone.
If you find out your mattress contains fiberglass, the best thing to do is to get rid of it and replace the mattress with one that does not contain fiberglass. However, this is not always in everybody’s budget or time constraints. If you can’t replace your mattress, there are still some things you can do to protect yourself from fiberglass.
The best thing you can do to prevent fiberglass exposure is to use a mattress protector. Waterproof mattress protectors are designed to prevent fluid and dirt from reaching your mattress’s surface. But mattress protectors can work the other way as well by preventing microscopic glass shards from making their way through your mattress cover.
If you want additional protection from fiberglass, consider using a mattress topper. A topper will put another couple of inches between you and the fiberglass inside your mattress. Just make sure the topper itself does not contain fiberglass, and also ensure you are using an impermeable mattress protector over both the topper and mattress.
The good news is there are tons of mattresses on the market that are both affordable and free from fiberglass. Novilla is one such mattress brand, but there are plenty of other options for you to choose from. You don’t have to pay more just to sleep on a safe and healthy mattress!
Those looking for an affordable mattress without fiberglass can check out the Novilla mattress brand. Both the hybrid and memory foam mattresses of this brand are quite affordable, and they have no fiberglass or other potentially hazardous materials.
“Professional sleeper” Malik Karman is a freelance writer for the eachnight blog. Over the years, Malik has read countless medical studies and explored hundreds of different bedding products in an effort to better understand what goes into a restorative night’s rest. Malik curates many of our “best mattress” guides to assist readers in the mattress buying process.
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