Emma Sleep is a German company that is very popular in the United Kingdom. Here in the US Emma sells three popular mattress lines that include a memory foam, hybrid, and adaptive firmness mattresses that are all very competitively priced. Many people praise Emma Sleep’s comfort to price value, and it’s easy to see why.
However, Emma Sleep’s answers regarding fiberglass in its flame barriers have changed drastically through the years. I decided to check up on its flame barrier materials again here in 2024, and they slipped up and admitted previous use of glass fiber in the mattresses it sold!
Asking Emma Sleep about Fiberglass
I asked Emma Sleep’s live chat about fiberglass in November 2022, and it said its mattresses were fiberglass-free!
However, I got in touch with Emma Sleep’s live chat again in 2023 to ask about the cover materials, flame barrier materials, as well as the country of origin.
The chat representative informed me that the covers were mostly made of polyester, with a bit of elastic, and that Emma Sleep mattresses were made in Ireland or the UK.
However, the inner cover’s composition was less than desirable.
“Inner Linning(sic): 60% modacrylic, 40% silica” -Emma Sleep
Emma Sleep Contained Silica and Modacrylic
Emma Sleep told me that their inner cover flame barriers were made of 60% Modacrylic and 40% Silica. I was a bit surprised to see these materials being used by a UK company, especially a German-based company, even if just for the United States market.
Was Emma Sleep’s Use of Modacrylic Bad?
Modacrylic is a synthetic modified acrylic fiber made of polymers and acrylonitrile. Acrylonitrile is a toxic substance that causes all sorts of health issues and cancer.
Most alarmingly, toxic acrylonitrile can often be found in trace amounts on finished modacrylic fibers.
Was Emma Sleep’s Use of Silica Bad?
Silica in its amorphous form is widely regarded as harmless, especially when FDA-approved Hydrated Silica is used as a fire retardant.
However, 40% is too high of a percentage for it to have been Hydrated Silica, which lead me to believe Emma Sleep may have been disguising fiberglass as silica.
It was for this reason that I stopped recommending Emma Sleep as a fiberglass-free mattress and labeled them as a deceptive mattress brand.
Emma Sleep Now Contains Rayon and Modacrylic
In 2023, I decided to get back in touch with Emma Sleep to see if anything regarding its flame barrier materials has changed. The live chat wasn’t working properly, so I emailed Emma Sleep and asked if its flame barriers still used 60% Modacrylic and 40% Fiberglass.
I purposely used the word “fiberglass” instead of “silica” to see if they’d correct me or not. It was a surprise to see Emma Sleep’s response included an entirely different material than before.
“Our mattresses are fiberglass free, its fire-retardant sock made of rayon or acrylic.” -Emma Sleep
That sounds good, right? Wrong.
Neither rayon nor acrylic are flame-resistant enough to be effective mattress flame barrier materials.
Is Emma Sleep’s Use of Rayon Bad?
Rayon is a semi-synthetic fiber that can be made fire-resistant by adding amorphous silica during manufacturing before it’s made into threads and woven into a fabric. Some rayon is made with worse chemicals than others, and there are people with sensitive skin that can’t use any type of rayon fabric without irritation.
Fire-resistant rayon with silica is a much better flame barrier than Fiberglass. However, Emma doesn’t actually say it’s using FR (Visil) Rayon, and when I asked if the rayon contained silica it didn’t have any answers for me.
Is Emma Sleep’s Use of Arylic Bad?
I assume Emma Sleep shortened the name of “Modacrylic” to “Acrylic” in its second reply, which might be understandable since Modacrylic literally stands for “modified acrylic”. However, Modacrylic and Acrylic are different materials that both have their own health risks, so the names aren’t interchangeable.
The potential use of Modacrylic is my main concern when it comes to Emma Sleep’s flame barrier construction, as it is to many consumers as well. So, misrepresenting Modacrylic by calling it acrylic is another potential deception.
I contacted Emma Sleep a third time and asked for more information on the fire-retardant rayon/acrylic sock that it’s now using on mattresses.
Emma Sleep Doesn’t Care to Reveal More Information
When Emma Sleep got back to me this fourth time around, it didn’t reveal much more information about its flame barrier materials. I was told that mattresses will contain different amounts of Acrylic and Rayon depending on which supplier made the mattress.
“You will see the exact information on the label inside the mattress. If in any case that you are not satisfied with the materials or the product itself. you may reach out to us to process a return.” -Emma Sleep
The craziest part of my entire interaction came with Emma Sleep’s third reply. If a buyer doesn’t like the materials on the tag after ordering the mattress, Emma Sleep says they should just return the mattress. Crazy, right? Just be up front and list your mattress materials!
Emma Sleep Accidentally Admitted Previous Fiberglass Use
In mid 2024 I decided to contact Emma Sleep to try and get some more information about the supposed Acrylic and Rayon flame barrier it now uses.
Emma Sleep didn’t give me any additional information regarding those materials, but the live chat rep did slip up and say something I wasn’t expecting.
“The information that was relayed to us is that we no longer have a glass fiber on it and it is composed of a mix of rayon and acrylic.” -Emma Sleep
So, that’s pretty hilarious. Emma Sleep is so happy that it’s no longer hiding its fiberglass by calling it silica that it slipped up and forgot to keep up that facade!
I guess that really confirms its claims of being fiberglass-free back in 2022 were outright lies. Nice!
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Last Updated on May 30, 2024
While shopping for his daughter’s first “big girl” bed in 2019, John learned about the hidden dangers of fiberglass in mattresses. Since then, he’s made it his mission to expose as much hidden fiberglass in mattresses as possible. His ultimate goal is federal regulations that ban fiberglass from being used in mattresses, or at least a law that requires it to be listed as a material on required tags.