Saatva is a popular brand that sells memory foam, latex, innerspring, and adjustable lines of mattresses. The Saatva mattresses are often recommended to people shopping for natural and non-toxic mattresses made without fiberglass.
But how safely and free of harmful materials are Saatva mattresses really made? Many mattress brands use healthy and green buzzwords, but aren’t really doing things much differently. This is the reason I decided to take a closer look at Saatva to see just how natural and safe they really are.
I found that Saatva mattresses use FR Rayon and polyester as a flame barrier in most of its mattresses, while the Zen Haven and Latex hybrid rely on just wool as the flame barriers.
What Saatva says about Fiberglass
Saatva doesn’t mention fiberglass on its mattress product pages. However, Saatva has a blog post titled “Is Fiberglass in Mattresses Safe? Why You Should Choose a Fiberglass-Free Mattress” that states this:
“All mattresses are required by law to have a flame barrier. In Saatva mattresses, we use natural thistle or organic New Zealand wool—both naturally derived nontoxic materials—for this purpose.” -Saatva
Further down in the article, Saatva also states this about its mattress materials:
“All of Saatva’s mattresses are made from high-quality materials—and we only use safe, nontoxic ingredients for our flame retardant, like natural thistle (plant-based fiber made mainly from wood pulp) and organic New Zealand wool.” -Saatva
So, that’s pretty cut and dry, right? I’d say so, but I decided to get in contact with Saatva via live chat just to do a follow-up fact check.
Saatva Live-Chat about its Flame Barrier
I contacted Saatva through its website’s live chat feature. I asked Saatva this question – “I’m curious about Saatva’s flame barrier.. I saw in an article that it’s thistle and wool.. am I correct to assume the thistle based fabric is rayon?”
The Saatva chat representative glossed over my rayon question, and instead gave me information I didn’t even ask for.
Saatva Mattresses Have Polyester
I was very surprised to see polyester being used in Saatva’s flame barrier, since the Saatva website says only safe and non-toxic materials are used.
This is the reply I received:
“The thistle consists of wood pulp and a polyester bonding agent.” -Saatva Live Chat
Polyester is a synthetic fiber made from Polyethylene terephthalate, which is a petroleum-based chemical compound. Some polyester fibers even have toxic Antimony found in trace amounts from the manufacturing process.
Also, many mattress makers often disguise their fiberglass use as “polyester and silica”. For this reason, I decided to ask Saatva if its mattresses contain silica.
Saatva Thistle Fiber is just Flame Resistant Rayon with Silica
Unsurprisingly, Saatva’s super green and natural thistle-based fame barrier is just Rayon.
This is the 2nd reply I received:
“..Some of our mattresses use natural thistle as the flame barrier while our Latex Hybrid and Zenhaven uses the New Zealand wool. The Solaire Mattress Paladin Flame Retardant is composed of inherently flame retardant rayon fibers blended with polyester fibers.. Rayon is a man-made fiber generated from natural cellulosic (made from cellulose) derived from wood pulp. The flame resistant variety used is infused with silica (sand) during the fiber formation” -Saatva Live Chat
However, it’s a bit unexpected to see it isn’t regular rayon, but inherently FR rayon made with silica added to the fibers during production – also known as Visil Rayon.
Altogether, It’s definitely still more shocking that Saatva has been hiding its use of polyester in combination with the FR rayon.
Saatva markets its mattresses as using natural and healthy materials. But polyester is a petroleum-based synthetic fiber and rayon is a semisynthetic fiber made from wood pulp that’s dissolved in chemicals, bleached, and then reconstituted as a fabric. So, Saatva isn’t nearly as natural as they portray themselves, nor are they as transparent and honest as they lead consumers to believe.
Does Saatva have Fiberglass or Not?
Finally, I plainly asked Saatva if its silica and polyester were just slick ways to disguise fiberglass use.
Saatva replied with a pretty direct answer.
“There is absolutely no fiberglass.” -Saatva Live Chat
There it is – Saatva states there is absolutely no fiberglass in its mattresses.
Normally, I would be skeptical. However, Saatva is a reputable brand, and they use Inherently FR Rayon, so there wouldn’t really be much of a reason for them to use fiberglass as well.
However, I do find it a bit deceptive that Saatva makes it seem like all of its mattresses use a thistle and wool blend material as a flame barrier. While in reality, only the Latex Hybrid and Zenhaven use wool as a natural flame barrier, and the rest of the Saatva mattresses use a Visil Rayon and Polyester blend flame barrier.
NOTE: Normally I post screenshots of the actual live-chat on mattress websites, but I was only able to save a text copy of the chat before it was closed, and I lost access. I used screenshots of the text transcript for this post instead. If you feel that’s not good proof, then contact Saatva and ask them fiberglass questions in live-chat for yourself!
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Last Updated on May 3, 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.