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Dust
Mite Resistant:
An advantage of memory foam
mattresses that is often touted, but failed to prove fully
true, according to the research
A
memory foam mattress does likely have some resistance to attracting
large dust mite populations, but it is not dust mite proof.
What
are they?
Dust mites, in case you don't know, are microscopic bugs that
mainly live on dead skin cells that are shed from people and
pets. Your mattress is a place that dust mites find attractive.
It's where they can find all the shedded skin cells and scales
they can eat. Oh, and they also like to chomp on the natural,
fibrous material that an innerspring mattress is usually made
of.
A typical mattress may have as many as 100,000 dust mites.
The droppings of dust mites and their own shedded skin are
what cause many allergies in people, including asthma.
They don't like to eat memory foam
Memory foam mattresses collect and absorb your shedded skin
cells, just as innerspring mattresses do. And this means dust
mites will be there to have a feast. However, memory foam
mattresses have an advantage that most innersprings do not.
Unlike the stuff inside an innerspring bed, memory foam does
not taste good to the little critters, and they tend to not
eat it.
This is why memory foam is often considered dust mite resistant.
It's not that dust mites don't live in it, eating away at
your dead skin to their hearts content and possibly giving
you allergies. It's just that they probably don't eat the
memory foam itself.
Does this mean that memory foam beds have fewer dust mites
than innerspring mattresses? This is not clear. And even if
memory foam mattresses did have fewer dust mites, does this
mean their dust mite populations would be too small to give
you allergies? Again, it is not clear.
Research results foggy
On top of this, our own research did not really uncover much
praise for memory foam mattress from their owners on how the
beds eliminated or reduced allergies. About 1% of memory foam
bed owners claimed that they benefited from the dust mite
resistance of their beds. Is this due to the memory foam or
due to the fact that their beds were new and had not yet had
the chance to attract as many dust mites as their last bed?
The bottom line
All of the above means that you probably should not buy a
memory foam mattress solely or mainly because you think it
will not have dust mites. To not have a significant dust mite
problem on a memory foam bed, you will need to use a dust
mite-resistant covering. The mattress may not do it on its
own.
Or you could look into waterbeds
or airbeds.
Your shedded skin cannot penetrate at least a significant
part of these beds -- and neither can dust mites.
More Information
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