HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, Aug. 30, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Customers who purchased a bestselling mattress offered on Amazon and at retailers nationwide are suing the producer amid claims that fiberglass fibers within the product have broken their well being.
Zinus, Inc., is fielding a number of lawsuits over its Green Tea Mattress.” Among the claims is a proposed class-action lawsuit led by a California woman who is representing several thousand people.
“It’s not hyperbole to say that this has ravaged 1000’s of people’ lives from throughout the United States,” James Radcliffe, a personal injury lawyer with Cueto Law, told the Los Angeles Times.
Radcliffes firm started a 2020 lawsuit on behalf of Amanda Chandler and Robert Durham of Illinois, who said they spent months in a hotel and paid more than $20,000 in professional mediation services after a Zinus memory foam mattress purchased at Walmart for their child contaminated their home with fiberglass in 2019.
Another woman, Vanessa Gutierrez of Los Angeles, told the Times that the mattress she bought for her 4-year-old daughter had cost her nearly $20,000 in damages and left scars from the fiberglass on the girl’s chest and calves.
One reviewer on Amazon warned that they unzipped the outer cover of the mattress and “unleashed [an] invisible fiberglass storm into our home,” CBS News reported.
A representative from Zinus told CBS News that the fiberglass is “commonplace within the mattress business” and isn’t considered hazardous by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
“Most client complaints about fiberglass being launched from mattresses which have been reviewed by workers concerned the outer cowl being eliminated or broken. If the outer cowl stays intact, then the publicity to fiberglass particles is anticipated to be minimal,” the CSPC told CBS News.
Californias Department of Public Health conducted a study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in February finding that fiberglass fibers had “a potential threat of client publicity if the zipper on the outer cowl is opened.”
Fiberglass is a less costly fire-retardant material. The queen-sized Green Tea memory foam mattress sells for about $310 on Amazon. It includes instructions warning customers not to remove the outer mattress cover, to protect the fire barrier inside, Zinus told CBS News.
Amazon did not respond to CBS News requests for comment. Walmart did and noted that it and other retailers have been dropped from the initial lawsuit.
More information
The US Consumer Product Safety Commission has more on mattresses.
SOURCES: CBS News; Los Angeles Times
