Are Mattress Pads Fire Retardant or Resistant?

General Definitions

• A mattress, as defined by the United States government, is a “ticking filled with resilient material” for sleeping on or in, and a mattress pad is defined as “material for use on top of a mattress.” Mattress pads may be made of cotton, down, feathers, foam, hair, natural fibers and byproducts, wool and man-made materials. All mattresses and mattress pads sold in the United States must adhere to flammability standards set forth in the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, 16 C.F.R. Part 1632 and be labeled as such.

Fire Retardant vs. Fire Resistant

• Fire or flame retardant mattress pads are made of fabrics that either delay the spread of flames or resist burning altogether. Fire retardant pads are chemically treated, requiring the consumer to wash them before first use. With repeated washing, the retardant chemicals are eventually removed.

  Fire or flame resistant pads are made of fabrics that meet guidelines established by the Consumer Products Safety Commission and that are resistant to flames with or without chemical treatment. Flames on these fabrics will self-extinguish, but the fabrics may be vulnerable to melting in the presence of heat.

Testing for Safety

• Mattress pads are put through rigorous preproduction testing to determine how fire safe they are. In the United States, the C.P.S.C. uses a cigarette ignition resistance test that is described in the Standard for the Flammability of Mattresses and Mattress Pads. In controlled tests, lit cigarettes are placed at specific intervals around the surface of the mattress pad and observed to determine how long the smolder from each cigarette stretches before the source is either extinguished or consumed. The test is pass/fail; char length must be no longer than two inches in any direction to pass. Retardant-treated pads are washed and dried a minimum of 10 times before testing. Post-production testing of random pads was discontinued in 1984. In 2007, the C.P.S.C. instituted open-flame mattress test standards.

Choices

• New technologies that offer resistant and retardant properties came out in advance of tougher mandatory regulations in 2007. That year the Louisville Bedding company introduced the FireDefender Sleep System. Intended for consumers who wanted to keep and re-cover older mattresses, the FireDefender mattress pads were constructed of nontoxic, fire-resistant materials.

  Although some natural fabrics such as wool are inherently fire resistant, mattress pads made of them are not approved for use around young children. Licensed physicians can issue prescriptions stating the need for a pad “made without chemical flame retardants” for those who do not want to sleep on chemically treated fire resistant and fire retardant materials.