
Help Jason & Tara with a hazmat issue
Hello my name is Tom, and I’m trying to raise funds for my stepson and his wife during a hazmat incident at their home. See my stepsons description below:
My family and I are in the middle of a hazmat style disaster in our home. We made a mistake (unknowingly and still shocking) by removing and washing the zippered cover on a Lucid brand hybrid mattress. Hours later we began experiencing severe itching and skin irritations. I initially thought it was due to high chemical level in hot tub from earlier. We started to see these sparking shards all over us and our clothing and by evening after doing just a few minutes of research, realized what just occurred. These manufacturers (including Zinus currently in a class action suit for same exact thing) use a fiberglass / fabric mesh layer underneath the ZIPPERED cover for a cheap fire retardant. No warning signs or labels on the mattress not to unzip or remove the cover to wash it. Common sense would indicate that a zippered cover is meant to be unzipped.
Here's what has happened. By doing this and washing and drying it... also with our fan on high in the bedroom at the time the cover was off.... tens if not hundreds of thousands of glass shards and particles have been distributed throughout our house, on walls, windows, window treatments, all of our clothing, pet stuff, furniture etc.
We have spent the entire weekend and will have to continue doing so in Tyvek suits , masked up etc with dozens of lint rollers, and electrostatic dust rags and more basically attempting to do a full remediation. If we continue to be unsuccessful, we will have to leave the property and hire a company who has dealt with this situation before.
99% of our clothes are trashed. Washer and dryer, mattress (obviously), pillows, blankets and other items up to around $4k plus worth of loss so far. Some things not replaceable. Once embedded in fabric it's very difficult to get these out. We will also need to get lung X-rays and our cats too.
This is a very short version of what is far more. We don't know whether we will need to relocate or not. We have to go buy all new clothing today and keep outside. Our lives are turned upside down. This morning was like getting punched in the gut as I walked out to our family room to see glass shards all over the floor again in the sunlight. All the cleaning we did seemed to be for naught .