A recent Sunday Times investigation by journalist Martina Lees has shone a light on something we've been saying since we started out back in 1999: the UK's strict furniture fire regulations mean the vast majority of mattresses on sale here have to be sprayed with chemical fire retardants to pass the test.
Pictured: The Budleigh Bed in Lichen House Linen.
The nasty truth about most mattresses
The report revealed how overly strict UK furniture fire regulations effectively force most mattress manufacturers to treat their products with chemical flame retardants in order to comply.
The two main chemicals used are TCPP and melamine. The World Health Organisation classes TCPP as "probably carcinogenic" and melamine as "possibly carcinogenic." Studies cited in the investigation link TCPP exposure to liver and kidney cancer, and melamine to bladder cancer and reduced male fertility.
That's a lot of nasty chemicals for something you lie on, night after night, for a third of your life.
Why we did things differently from day one
We've always thought spraying chemicals onto something you sleep on every night is crazy. It's exactly why we set up Naturalmat 25 years ago, handcrafting mattresses from organic and natural materials instead. Avoiding chemical fire retardants has been a driving force for us since day one, and within six months of starting out, our founders had launched the first nursery mattress in the UK to pass all British safety standards with no plastics, synthetics, glues or chemical fire retardants. We've never used chemical fire retardants, and we never will.
So how do our mattresses pass fire regulations?
Instead of chemicals, we harness the naturally fire-retardant properties of organic wool, both inside our mattresses and woven into the covering fabric itself. Wool has a naturally high ignition point and a high nitrogen and water content, which means it's slow to catch fire, doesn't melt onto skin, and tends to self-extinguish rather than continuing to burn. It's why wool has been used as a natural fire barrier for centuries, long before synthetic chemical treatments existed.
We buy our certified organic wool directly from farmers on our doorstep in the southwest, and every mattress is still handmade by our team of skilled craftspeople in our solar-powered Devon workshop. This wool allows our mattresses and toppers to pass strict British fire regulations completely naturally, with nothing sprayed on and nothing added.
It's a simple idea, really. Nature already solved this problem long before the chemical industry tried to.
Pictured: The Lanyard Bed in Mark Alexander Offset Parchment.
You can read the full Sunday Times article here.
