Actually, this is what our used mattress regs could look like!

When we last looked at the problems and challenges of regulating the refurbishing of used mattresses and the infamous lack of New York State regulations, we specifically considered the strange regulatory picture in California and the revealing story of a variance request in Nevada.

However, I completely missed the events that unfolded after Nevada’s Board of Health approved a hotel furniture dealer’s variance request to use chemical sanitization, specifically with Steri-Fab, to sanitize used bedding, instead of the fumigation methods prescribed by Nevada law.

(In my feeble defense, the state’s amended regulations were not available online at the time I wrote that post. Still, I should have looked deeper.)

A bit late but here is the full story. It is a good and hopeful one for a change!

If you want to skip the story and just read the mattress regs (PDF), please do because I do go on.

This all began in 2006 when the Southern Nevada Health District (SNHD)—with jurisdiction in Clark County and the cities of Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Henderson, Mesquite, and Boulder City—found body-fluids-stained and bed-bug-infested used mattresses and upholstered furniture during routine hotel inspections. The mattresses were untagged or improperly tagged. They traced the mattresses and furniture to a refurbishing facility that did not follow a mattress sanitizing process according to Nevada law (and was stupendously unsanitary). SNHD issued a Cease and Desist order. Another refurbisher applied to the Nevada Board of Health for a variance request in order to use Steri-Fab instead of the onerous fumigation method then designated by law for the sanitizing of used bedding. When that variance request was approved, it was done on condition that the refurbisher work with SNHD to address any concerns.

Concerns like bed bugs!

SNHD outlined their concerns in a presentation about the proposed mattress sanitizing regulations (PDF)—if nothing else, you have to check it out for the great photographs of refurbishing facilities and horrendous hotel furniture!

• Vague Procedures
• No detail on “sanitation room” design
• No detail on visual inspection process that was going to be performed by Hotel Furniture Sales staff
• No procedure for disposition of mattresses with adulterants present
• Open-ended phrase, “or comparable product” left room for blanket approval of any chemical treatment
• “Thoroughly treated” not defined
• Insufficient, improper application of Steri-Fab would likely not eliminate bedbugs, including ova

SNHD found the refurbisher’s process inadequate and issued a Cease and Desist order. Two more Cease and Desist orders were issued to other facilities before SNHD decided to go to California (California of the “strict” mattress regulations, remember) on a little fact-finding trip in February 2007.

“Effective, repeatable processes”

SNHD visited five mattress refurbishing facilities in California and analyzed the evidence, including video and photographs, to arrive at the following conclusions:

1. Facilities employing chemical sanitizers did not have adequately trained staff.
2. The chemical sanitizer of choice was not applied in a way that saturated all parts of the mattress, such as the coils.
3. At some facilities, the employees were relying upon real-time advice from the State of California inspectors on how to apply the chemical sanitizer. Even with that instruction, the sanitizer was not applied correctly.
4. Fluorescent crystals that were part of the sanitizing solution did not remain in suspension long enough to be properly dispersed as a detection agent to ensure complete coverage of the mattress with the chemical sanitizer.
5. Facilities were cross-contaminating mattresses that had received sanitizer treatment with ones that had not.
6. Two facilities that employed a dry heat method of sanitization were able to present objective evidence in the form of permanent data logger recordings that they had effective, repeatable processes in place. All parts of the mattresses, including the interior coils, received sufficient heat to destroy pathogens and insects.

Based on these findings, staff concluded:

1. Use of chemical sanitizer applied by employees was prone to human error.
2. Using a visual observation of fluorescense under magnification is too subjective to reliably guarantee that adequate disinfection took place.
3. The only consistently reliable method of sanitization observed at this time was dry heat sanitization.
4. Dry heat sanitization resulted in a written, objective record of the processes used to disinfect the mattresses.

Source: SNHD memorandum of September 27, 2007 on the adoption of the new mattress sanitizing regulations (PDF)

And that’s how the Southern Nevada Health District found the state’s regulations inadequate and came to write its own mattress sanitizing regulations which provide for only one method of sanitizing used bedding, dry heat.

The State of Nevada, not persuaded by the evidence presented by the SNHD, nevertheless ended up revising their used bedding sanitizing regulations too, getting rid of the formaldehyde/sulphur and hydrocyanic acid gas sterilization methods but replacing them with a vague “application of a chemical pesticide” method, as long as it is properly labeled for disinfecting used bedding and is applied “in a manner which ensures that the used or secondhand articles are disinfected.”

It’s all in the details, State of Nevada.

Saying “in a manner which ensures that the used or secondhand articles are disinfected” is rather meaningless and unenforceable. Good luck with that.

But the bright side is the decisive and right step taken by the Southern Nevada Health District!

Read the Southern Nevada Health District final regulations (PDF). They make clear what the dangers are. They prohibit taking mattresses from the trash for the purpose of refurbishing or refurbishing a mattress that is “adulterated and beyond the point where it can be properly sanitized and/or refurbished.” They are smart and comprehensive, proceeding from a thorough understanding of what is actually required to properly sanitize used bedding and prevent cross-contamination, providing, for example, for the designation of distinct areas or rooms in a refurbishing facility—a receiving area, an area for replacement of the padding, a third area for the dry heat sterilization process, and a fourth area for storage.

Until we altogether abandon the idea that used mattresses should be refurbished and resold to hotels, motels, nursing homes, prisons and the general public, the Southern Nevada Health District’s mattress sanitizing regulations are the model regulations for this industry in our new age of bed bugs.

Yes, the regulations have not been well received everywhere. This is a reaction from the rent-to-own industry.

I’m not unsympathetic and these are tough times, but health and safety come first.

These pages may be of related interest:

1. We are reviewing the new NYS Department of State proposed mattress sanitizing regs
2. What would New York’s missing mattress sanitizing regs look like anyway?
3. The copy/paste approach to writing mattress sanitizing regulations
4. Dr. Philip Tierno: “I would never buy a refurbished mattress, a reconditioned mattress, under any circumstances”
5. Ending the 30-day trial risk plus remembering the essential mattress problem