Ikea Sultan Fonnes

Ikea mattress gas smell is beyond horrible – After purchasing this mattress in Australia and placing into a trundle base, I kept smelling this awful odour, thinking it might be something wet in the room, I finally realized it was the mattress. A close sniff and it was undeniable. Taking cover off and airing in hallway, I felt nauseated for days even in neighboring rooms, throughout the night. It's now outside airing, but I'm holding little hope and will return if I can or hard rubbish it is. Comfy Terrible potent gaseous smell, don't buy!

Nauseating and Terrible in Australia, but Great in Sweden – I bought two Sultan Fonnes mattresses from IKEA here in Melbourne. This is the same brand of mattress i bought in Sweden about 1 year ago. We were very happy with them in Sweden, so i went for the same brand. What a huge fail that decision was. After unpacking them I noticed a very unpleasant chemical-like smell. After leaving them out in the sun most of the day, the smell was still bad, and after more than a week the smell still had not gone away.

Now I'm ashamed to say my kids were sleeping on these beds, but one night i decided i would sleep on one of them, but in the morning, i felt drenched with the smell, the bedding smelt sickly terrible also. A sort of sickly nauseating chemical smell.

So i took them back. And tried to get an explanation. The three people in the storage hall had not heard of this, but they suggested that it could be related to quarantine coming into Australia, or perhaps the beds are treated before being shipped to Australia. The person working in the bedding department had never heard of this either.

Still my question is, Why does the bed have to smell so terrible that it makes me feel nauseous, when the same bed i bought in Sweden has no bad smell at all, and was great to sleep on?

Why can't i buy this same great bed, in Australia?

Why is the quality here in Australia so bad, but in Sweden the quality is great.

So i got them to open a third mattress and sure enough, it smells just as bad.

After speaking the relevant government fumigation experts regarding quarantine it is clear that the mattresses do not need to be fumigated when they enter Australia, and furthermore, even if they were, it would likely have little affect since they are foam and the fumigation agent is nearly odorless.

Having pushed this question all the way up to the IKEA national quality manager I have gotten a reply that describes the fumigation process and that the beds should not be being fumigated. Same information from the government. But no answer to my question about why is the quality so bad in Australia but not in Sweden.

The national quality manager also claims that they have never come across a foam mattress with this problem.

Given the strength of the smell and that i tested 3 mattresses, this seems highly unlikely.

Speaking to some other people with 20 years experience with mattress manufacture and import in Melbourne, I got the following very plausible explanation.

The mattresses are manufactured in a humid country, they are sprayed with formaldehyde to prevent then from going moldy during transport to Australia.

So what is formaldehyde?

Unfortunately In 2011, the American National Toxicology Program http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ named formaldehyde as a known human carcinogen in their 12th Report on Carcinogens. http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/?objectid=03C9AF75-E1BF-FF40-DBA9EC0928DF8B15

From an Australian government product safety point of view

"Exposure to low levels of formaldehyde does not present a health concern but exposure to high levels of formaldehyde can cause adverse health effects including significant sensory irritation, breathing difficulties and allergic contact dermatitis."

"There is an increased risk of rare cancers in situations where people have prolonged, high level exposure to formaldehyde. The United Nations International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) currently classifies formaldehyde as being 'carcinogenic to humans'."

http://www.productsafety.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/973697

So the question remains, why are they selling such an aweful, horrible probuct with possible negative health implications, when in the Swedish IKEA store the bed has none of these problems?

The Swedish IKEA bed is made in Poland.

The Australian IKEA bed is probably not, presumably in China/asia somewhere.

The obvious hypothesis is, they don't want to spend the money on manufacturing to make it in a non-humid environment, but would rather cover it in a horrible chemical and have the Australian consumer just suffer through it.

So some of this is fact, some is conjecture. I don't know its formaldehyde, but i do know it smelt awful and sleeping on it was awful.

And having lived in Sweden for 7 years, i know that a Swedish consumer would not accept this for 1 second. Australian version: nothing. The Swedish version is comfortable and has no bad nauseating smell Unusable due to the horrible smell. I wouldn't recommend it to a friend or an enemy.