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Comment by d23 | Hacker News Reader

> Who knows how long I would have survived on my toxic mattress!

I mean. Yeah? If I found out my mattress was toxic and had been slowly poisoning me by releasing VOCs every night for 8 hours, I'd probably want one that wasn't. I don't know anything about that particular brand, but if you're going to bring it up in a blog post, it seems like a good place to actually investigate whether there's any merit to the claim instead of just assuming there isn't.

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The problem is that it doesn't pass the sniff test. Do you really think that your mattress is poisoning you? Like, we can spend a load of time chasing down whether VOCs really are a thing and all that, but it's just not really how the world works, if you think through the implications of really believing that toxic chemicals from your mattress are impacting you, you end up very quickly in an absurd state - because the same things that are meant to be killing you in your mattress are in everything.

> but it's just not really how the world works

Uh, proof? People being around chemicals all the time that end up being more harmful than first believed is common enough. Let's take lead and asbestos for easy examples. BPA for a more recent (but I think more controversial?) one.

The thing is, if it were real, the company would be getting signed off by the EPA, not by some 3rd party "non-profit" that it pays for certification. What I'm saying is look at the list of materials in a mattress, and look at the list of materials everywhere else in your house. If you truly believe your mattress is poisoning you then the solution isn't to buy this mattress. It's to replace every item of furniture, clothing, wallpaper, paint, cleaning sprays, air fresheners etc. And you'll do all this despite noticing literally no symptoms from exposure to these life-threatening chemicals.

> if it were real, the company would be getting signed off by the EPA

Lots of things aren't regulated by the EPA, the FDA etc. Major cosmetic companies used lead in lipstick until fairly recently...

And ironically enough, a lot of the toxicity from Mattresses and furniture etc is caused by the government regulation because it's from requiring them to be treated in Fire Retardants

If you really want to waste your time chasing down obviously spurious safety claims, feel free. Here's the thing though - if you actually figure out the claim is true, the thing you would certainly not do is start a company selling non-toxic mattresses.

I'm not even arguing the product has merit. I'm arguing the only that would be remotely interesting about what you're saying is if you took the time to do even a cursory amount of research and justify the position.

> The problem is that it doesn't pass the sniff test. Do you really think that your mattress is poisoning you?

That's not how... thinking works. Do you really think cigarettes are poisoning you?

I sleep on my mattress and wake up feeling fine every day. My mattress is made of the same stuff everything else in my house is made of. If you buy into the idea that your mattress is poisoning you, you've bought into the idea that everything is poisoning you.

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