loopster's Profile

We purchased a sonno versa mattress after doing some research, unfortunately I kind of glazed by the comments re: off-gassing. Our sofa had a brief off-gassing period and it was manageable. However our experience with the sonno was far less benign. We could not sleep in the room for one week and had to keep the doors shut. It continued to off-gas appreciably for the full 30 days that they allow you to decide if you like it. I tried to convince myself that it really was not that bad but my eyes would be stinging after I lay down on it for a period of time. More concerning, over the entire 30 days that we had the mattress I had physical changes that usually I only have for a one week during the month. I did not make the connection to the mattress until finally, 30 days into the experience I googled "polyurethane toxic fumes" after waking up with a headache and generally feeling unhealthy. My search prior to buying the mattress led me to the wikipedia page on polyurethane which made it sound like a relatively benign material. The second search led me to the National Geographic Green Guide and they explained that polyurethane can off-gas toluene and phosgene both of which are neurotoxins. At this point I freaked out and we wrapped the mattress in plastic. It took about a week after for my body to change back to normal. Now I am reading, and people on this list have previously mentioned that these chemicals can mimic estrogen which completely makes sense based on what I was experiencing. If you are interested in a foam mattress, I would consider latex as it is natural, however, they do use chemicals to "fix" the latex. We decided to go back to good old spring technology and are stearing clear of polyurethane.