Popular Green Tea Mattress Caused Severe Health Issues in Kids, Mom Claims in Lawsuit

A mother is the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against a popular green tea mattress sold at Amazon, which she claims led to her children's severe health issues.

Vanessa Gutierrez said that her family has incurred over $20,000 in expenses from sleeping on a $400 mattress from Zinus Inc., a South Korean company based in California. The mother said that the mattress was infused with fiberglass that became exposed and led to sores and rashes on her 5-month-old daughter and asthma flare-ups for her 9-year-old girl, per Los Angeles Times.

Zinus mattresses have over 130,000 reviews on Amazon, garnering an average of 4.4 stars.

Mom claims her kids were "sleeping on poison"

Mattresses are required to have a "Do Not Remove Cover" label to protect the users and Gutierrez said that her children's mattresses were intact with the protective covering unopened and never removed. Still, some fiberglass apparently managed to break through the layer. Fiberglass consist of a mixture of plastic and glass and serves as a flame-retardant barrier on mattresses, which is a standard requirement for any mattress.

The mom relayed in her lawsuit that she noticed the shards of fiberglass more than two months after going back and forth to the doctors. She subsequently noticed that fiberglass particles were all over the house, infiltrating their ventilation system.

Gutierrez said that the fiberglass was hard to remove from furniture and clothes so her only choice was to rent a storage unit for the mattresses, along with any contaminated clothes and furniture. In total, she incurred costly expenses for medical bills, remediation, and loss of household items. Her home felt unsafe for her kids for a time as they were "sleeping on poison."

She got in touch with Zinus and was allegedly offered $1,000 as compensation but she turned it down. Instead, she consulted with personal injury lawyer James Radcliffe and found a few other families with similar issues with Zinus, per CBS News.

Parents Amanda Chandler and Robert Durham also spent thousands on remediation services and medical bills after they bought the popular mattress for their child in 2019. Shasta Uhler, on the other hand, developed inflamed lungs within 72 hours of using the mattress she bought on Amazon.

Is fiberglass really poison?

Fiberglass is considered a safer replacement for the more harmful chemicals used in older types of flame retardants, which have been linked to cancer and other hormone disruption issues in kids. After a series of testing four different mattresses, including Zinus, researchers said that all tested passed the Certi-PUR-US standards.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) acknowledged that they have received complaints regarding mattresses made of fiberglass, whose outer cover has either become damaged or removed. However, the CPSC believes that fiberglass exposure in these cases was expected to be minimal. Still, the CPSC is currently investigating more than 128 complaints regarding fiberglass mattresses filed since 2020, according to EWG.org.

Meanwhile, Zinus said that their mattresses have been proven to have "chemical-free fire safety material," which the CPSC has determined do not contain any poison. They have also complied with the safety standards of the CPSC. As such, they look forward to defending their position in the lawsuit.