Do Olee Mattresses Contain Fiberglass?

If you’re looking at affordable mattresses, chances are you’ve run across the Olee Sleep brand. Olee mattresses might be incredibly affordable, but this comes at a cost. These mattresses contain a dangerous material known as fiberglass.

The Olee Mattress Brand

Olee mattresses are affordable and good-looking. You can get a memory foam mattress for under $200. Unfortunately, this low cost comes at a price, and that price is serious corner-cutting. Olee uses low-quality and potentially hazardous ingredients, including fiberglass, to keep its costs so low.

SEE ALSO: Softest Mattress in a Box

What is Fiberglass?

Fiberglass is a specialized type of plastic that has been reinforced with tiny glass particles. The glass particles make the plastic stronger and more durable without compromising its flexibility.

Fiberglass has almost limitless industrial uses. It can be used in any number of housing development areas, including insulation, fireproofing, and roofing. It can also go in sporting equipment like kayaks, canoes, and their accessories. It’s probably even in your car’s bumpers and brake pads.

Most of the industrial uses for fiberglass are safe because they don’t directly expose you to fiberglass particles. However, using fiberglass in a mattress is not one of its safe uses.

Why Would a Mattress Have Fiberglass?

Mattresses have fiberglass inside them for one reason: cheap fire protection. The materials inside your mattress are often highly flammable. This is especially true if we’re talking about synthetic materials like memory foam or polyester fabric. For this reason, all mattresses made in the USA are required to have a fire barrier around their internal components.

Fiberglass cannot ignite. Rather, it will melt instead of bursting into flame. This melting process creates a barrier over the more flammable foams inside the mattress, preventing them from combusting and slowing or even stopping the spread of fire. This is why mattresses containing fiberglass typically have a fiberglass sock woven directly under the cover.

Drawbacks of Fiberglass

There are many drawbacks to fiberglass when it comes to mattresses. Fiberglass inside your mattress can threaten your health in a number of ways. When you’re exposed to fiberglass, the glass particles can leave thousands of tiny cuts all over your body.

If this happens on your skin, it will leave a rash and irritation. If it happens in your eyes, it can leave you with dry eye symptoms, irritation, and even blurred vision. If you breathe in fiberglass, it can irritate your airways and lead to chronic lung infections.

Many people think that fiberglass is alright inside their mattresses because they won’t be exposed to it. But this is just not true. There are many avenues for you to be exposed to fiberglass because the tiny glass shards can easily work their way through a mattress cover.

This issue can be exacerbated by shipping mattresses in a box. Rolling mattresses up into a box and crushing them down can rip the fiberglass cloth inside, which can mean your mattress is covered in microscopic glass shards as soon as you pull it out of the box.

Benefits of Fiberglass

There are no direct benefits of having fiberglass inside a mattress. The only reason fiberglass ever appears in mattresses is because it is the cheapest option available to manufacturers that allows them to meet fire safety standards. This can translate into a lower cost for the consumer.

However, when this cost is accompanied by skin, eye, and airway irritation, it becomes a lot more problematic. This is especially true when you consider the fact that there are tons of adequate fiberglass alternatives that are much better for your health and sometimes even more effective at preventing fire.

Fiberglass Alternatives for Mattresses

Potentially the best fiberglass alternative for a mattress is wool. Natural wool is highly resistant to combustion, establishing safe mattresses without fiberglass. It is very hard to ignite wool without an accelerant or kindling. Furthermore, wool fabric can often extinguish flame internally. This means even if some wool ignites, fire has a hard time spreading through the rest of it.

This is why a large proportion of mattress manufacturers use wool as a fire barrier. It is naturally flame retardant and not a threat to your health. Other common flame barriers often used in mattresses include silk, thistle (what Saatva uses instead of fiberglass, along with wool), other plant-based textiles, and silica fabric.

SEE ALSO: Best Eco-Friendly Mattresses

How to Tell if a Mattress Has Fiberglass

Mattresses are required by law to have some sort of label that lists their ingredients for the consumer. This label should tell you whether or not a mattress has fiberglass inside it and what percentage of the mattress is fiberglass.

If you don’t have a label, look at the cover tag. The cover tag often comes with instructions for how to care for the mattress. If this tag prohibits the removal of the cover, you should suspect that there is fiberglass inside the mattress, especially if it is a cheap mattress.

There are also customer reviewers and independent sleep bloggers who note the presence of fiberglass in a mattress, and a few brands even admit up front that their mattresses have fiberglass. Some mattress retailers and brands that

• Zinus mattresses
• Nectar mattresses
• Lucid mattresses
• Vibe mattresses
• Casper mattresses
• Ashley Furniture mattresses
• Linenspa mattresses
• Leesa mattresses
• Allswell mattresses
• Some Helix mattresses
• Big Lots mattresses
• Amazon mattresses
• Wayfair mattresses

Is Olee a Good Mattress Brand?

You might be tempted to purchase an Olee mattress because it’s so affordable. But the low-quality ingredients and poor construction of these mattresses mean you’re better off going with a higher-quality brand.

Remember, better-quality budget mattresses might be more expensive upfront, but they’re more durable and therefore do not have to be replaced as frequently. This means they’ll end up being much less expensive – not to mention comfortable – in the long run.

Not sure where to start looking for a mattress without fiberglass? Here our some of our favorite mattress brands focused on consumer safety with fiberglass-free models:

• Amerisleep mattresses
• Puffy mattresses
• Novilla mattresses
• Sweetnight mattresses
• Saatva mattresses
• Tuft and Needle mattresses
• Most IKEA mattresses
• Zoma mattresses
• Vaya mattresses

FAQs

How much should I pay for a mattress without fiberglass?

The good news is that mattresses without fiberglass don’t have to cost an arm and a leg. There are plenty of affordable mattresses under $1000 out there that avoid the use of fiberglass.

While it’s true these mattresses are still more expensive than fiberglass mattresses, they’re often not that much more expensive. While you might be able to get a fiberglass mattress for $200 to $400, you can find mattresses without fiberglass for $400 to $600, no problem.

What should I do if my mattress has fiberglass?

If your mattress has fiberglass inside it, the best thing you can do is get rid of it and replace it. However, this is not in everybody’s budget. If you can’t replace your mattress right away, there are a couple of other options to buy time.

The best option if you’re sleeping on a fiberglass mattress is to ensure that you’re using an impermeable mattress protector over it. Waterproof mattress protectors are designed to prevent dirt and water from seeping through to your mattress. But they work the other way as well, and they can prevent fiberglass particles from making their way through your mattress cover to you.

You can also consider a mattress topper. While a mattress topper won’t protect you from fiberglass without an impermeable protector on top of it, it can add an extra layer of material between you and the fiberglass. Just make sure the topper doesn’t have a fiberglass fire barrier inside it.

Is the fiberglass in my mattress causing my health issues?

If you’re having health issues that line up with the symptoms of fiberglass exposure, it may very well be that fiberglass is seeping through the cover of your mattress. Fiberglass exposure can cause many issues ranging from eye irritation to inflammation in the airways to skin rashes.

If you are having symptoms like this and can’t seem to figure out why, check out what’s inside your mattress. If your mattress cover is worn or torn, you could be especially likely to be exposed to the fiberglass inside it.

Should I worry about fiberglass exposure in items other than my mattress?

Typically, fiberglass is safer in items other than mattresses and plush furniture. For instance, you’re not very likely to be exposed to the fiberglass insulation inside your walls. You’re also probably not going to be exposed to the fiberglass in your car’s brake pads.

Even fiberglass inside sporting equipment is much safer than fiberglass inside a mattress because it is a rigid and structured form of fiberglass that is less likely to put out glass shards. This sort of fiberglass is also usually encased in a hard shell. For this reason, you don’t have to worry as much about fiberglass in your environment as you do fiberglass in your mattress.

How do I know whether my mattress has fiberglass inside it?

Usually, mattresses have a label that lists their ingredients either affixed to the mattress itself or accompanying the mattress inside its packaging. This label will tell you if your mattress contains fiberglass. If you no longer have this label, look at the care instructions by reading the mattress tag.

If they prohibit you from taking the cover off, it’s likely because there’s fiberglass underneath.

Bottom Line

Fiberglass is not always a dangerous material to have inside everyday items, but in mattresses, it is. It can work its way through the cover and come into contact with you, irritating your lungs, eyes, and skin. For this reason, it’s best to avoid mattresses containing fiberglass fire barriers, including Olee Sleep brand mattresses.