So where can people buy sofas and beds without these chemicals? I recently asked about this at Restoration Hardware (an expensive furniture store), and they had no idea about it.
In California, most furniture now appears to have a label that indicates whether flame retardants were used. Sadly, this is quite recent, and CA more or less required flame retardants until a couple years ago.
I wonder if they are still labeled with some form of “known by the state of California to contain carcinogens”? Those are more than a touch concerning as a visitor, although you soon notice that they are on everything.
Yeah, as someone who recently began spending more time in California, those signs are inadequate and completely ignored by everyone. It should be specific, which carcinogen in which part of the product is used, and why.
In the UK plenty of mid to high end pocket sprung mattresses are flame retardant free. John Lewis specify whether they have retardants or not.
I'll be buying a new sofa this year so I'm keenly interested on the sofa side. It seems that Ikea are the only company that make nicely designed not incredibly expensive sofas. Will look at vintage as well.
All mass produced furniture has them. The only way to avoid is to find the last few vendors that build-to-order items like sofas, but then we're talking ultra-premium tier pricing (and are rare).
Even the new flame retardant that they're using to replace the old one is considered dangerous. So there's no end in near sight to this problem. I don't know of a realistic/affordable solution for normal consumers, even with knowledge of the problem.
At least in the US I think you'd have to make it yourself.
I believe that mattresses are somehow exempt in the US? So the futon becomes a weird gray area. You can buy one with the express intent of using it only as a couch, but you put a mattress on it. I'm not 100% sure to be honest.
A few years back I bought a sofa from a small manufacturer that claimed it was free of fire retardants. Similar story for my mattress. The mattress side took some research, but from what I found most foam mattresses are free of them, and some manufacturers use a tightly woven cotton cover to get the fire retardant properties, rather than a cover treated with fire retardant chemicals.
Do your own research, but from what I found it’s not too hard to be careful about this stuff.
The underlying problem here is that furniture doesn't need flame retardants, period. You wind up with this weird mouse & cat game. A drive to replace one additive just find something new, previously unknown, and possibly worse.
For example banning lead additives from gasoline was a good thing. It was replaced with MTBE which causes to groundwater contamination. This has now been banned in the US, which ironically sees ethanol replacing it. Ethanol production obviously predates gasoline, so it could have been used all along.
In the Bay Area, my wife was also concerned about the brominated fire-retardants and found a manufacturer in Marin that use latex foam and wool toppers to make mattresses. We ordered one for us (custom dimensions for a European bed) and one for our daughter. We also had them make cushions for our couch: the frame is rattan so no stuffing or fabric, then we just put the old covers over the new cushions. They are all comfortable and free of chemicals. The downsides are they are expensive and heavy (takes 2 people to move the twin mattress). However, this was over 10 years ago, and I don't remember the name of the company.
I bought a mattress that is made purely of wool and nothing else. There is an "eco-mattress" market that has a number of companies making such products. Wool is also naturally somewhat flame-retardant too.
