HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, Aug. 30, 2022 (HealthDay Information) — Shoppers who purchased a bestselling bed bought on Amazon and at outlets national are suing the producer amid claims that fiberglass fibers within the product have broken their well being.
Zinus, Inc., is fielding more than one proceedings over its “Inexperienced Tea Bed.” Among the claims is a proposed class-action lawsuit led by a California woman who is representing several thousand people.
“It is not hyperbole to mention that this has ravaged hundreds of people’ lives from throughout the US,” James Radcliffe, a personal injury lawyer with Cueto Law, told the Los Angeles Times.
Radcliffe’s 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 hurricane into our area,” CBS News reported.
A representative from Zinus told CBS News that the fiberglass is “usual within the bed business” and isn’t considered hazardous by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
“Maximum shopper proceedings about fiberglass being launched from mattresses which have been reviewed by way of personnel concerned the outer duvet being got rid of or broken. If the outer duvet stays intact, then the publicity to fiberglass debris is anticipated to be minimum,” the CSPC told CBS News.
California’s 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 possible possibility of shopper publicity if the zipper at the outer duvet 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 U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has more on mattresses.
SOURCES: CBS Information; Los Angeles Occasions
