Sleeping Pillows

What do you know about the pillow that you sleep on every night? Is that little puff ball that you stick your face on so old that you cannot even remember where it came from? And what is that pillow made from? Because you put your face in that pillow about 6 - 9 hours every day you might want to think about how it affects your health. Here is a good article from the Green Guide, a National Geographic Publication. And by the way we have a complete line of organic sleeping pillows including organic cotton, organic wool, shredded natural rubber, buckwheat, and molded rubber. Stop by and take a test nap.

http://www.thegreenguide.com/products/Bedding/Pillows
Pillows

What to Look For

We spend as much as a third of our lives sleeping, but the National Sleep Foundation has found that almost 75 percent of American adults have problems getting a good night's sleep. Whether that's due to noise, light pollution or any number of other factors, you may help rectify uneasy sleep with a better pillow, especially on that won't contribute to health problems like allergies and sinusitis.

Below is a breakdown of the natural and organic alternatives to problematic conventional materials, and when you're shopping, choose pillows with organic cotton shells, when available. One company, White Lotus, sells more affordable versions of its pillows in "green" (conventionally grown but chemically untreated) cotton.

Buckwheat

Asian cultures have used buckwheat pillows for centuries. The body-conforming hulls allow your head to lie naturally, which relieves tension, and they provide room for air to circulate, keeping you cool.

The environmental impact of buckwheat, from which the hulls are taken, is very low. Even when grown conventionally, it's a pesticide-free crop and requires very little fertilizer. It's even a natural weed killer because nothing can grow underneath it, and it's inherently pest-resistant, making it an ideal choice for sufferers of dust-mite allergies. As a final bonus, buckwheat grows very abundantly in the U.S. and Canada, supporting local farmers and local economies.

Wool

Naturally fire retardant, untreated wool wicks moisture away from your body while you sleep, and it dries quickly, making it unappealing to dust mites, which thrive in warm, moist surroundings. It is also resistant to mold spores and mildew.

Opt for wool products that are chemically untreated and harvested from organically raised sheep or those that bear the "Pure Grow Wool" label, which represents wool from humanely raised sheep raised on pesticide-free land.

Kapok

Kapok-filled pillows provide a non-allergenic, humane alternative to down. The pillows are stuffed with fibers from seed pods of the tropical kapok, or Ceiba, tree that grows in South American rain forests, Africa, Indonesia and other parts of Asia. Seed pods fall to the ground, where they are gathered by local residents. The collection of fibers is done with little harm to the environment, and it provides work and economic support for the communities surrounding the rain forests.

Organic Cotton

Organic cotton doesn't necessarily resist dust mites, but the pillows provide a natural material alternative to people with allergies to wool, buckwheat and latex.

Natural Latex

Natural latex is tapped from rubber trees and is a replenishable rainforest resource. While not as widely available as the other natural alternatives, it offers the same support benefits as polyurethane pillows. Some natural latex pillows are thick pieces of foam and others contain shredded latex, which provides more spring.

Shopping Tips

When purchasing buckwheat pillows, ask the retailer about their buckwheat-hull supplier's cleaning methods. Buckwheat dust lingering on improperly cleaned hulls has been known to trigger asthma attacks. High-quality pillows contain hulls that are cleaned very thoroughly, either by air blowing, vaccumming and sifting the hulls to remove dust or by roasting them, which burns off the dust. Look for retailers that are supplied by U.S. or Canadian suppliers, rather than international suppliers, that can offer assurances of proper cleaning methods.

Avoid pillows made with a mixture of natural and synthetic latex. The latter is treated with chemicals during the manufacturing process.

Also, look out for "Hypodown," billed as less allergenic than traditional down. While the pillows contain 20 percent syriaca clusters, or milkweed, they still contain 80 percent goose down, which doesn't alleviate any of the problems associated with animal cruelty (see The Backstory).

Because natural-material pillows are on the expensive side, you can cut costs buy purchasing fills separately and stuffing them into a zippered pillow encasement you already own. Many retailers, such as White Lotus and Eco Bedroom, will supply stuffing material in bulk for a reasonable price.

To preserve the life of your pillow, invest in a washable, removable organic cotton or Pure Grow Wool pillow encasement. These also help to block dust mite allergens from your current pillow.

Product Comparisons

The following companies sell pillows in standard, queen and king sizes. Buckwheat pillows tend to run smaller than standard size, which is 20" x 26," although many companies sell them in both small and standard sizes.

Wondering what these table headings mean? They're the criteria we used to choose and evaluate the products in the chart below. Learn more about their importance in What To Look For.
Buckwheat Kapok Wool Organic Cotton Natural Latex Organic Cotton Allergen Barriers

Personal Health

Beds provide an optimal breeding ground for household dust mites, which are potent allergens and a factor in 50 to 80 percent of asthmatics. Dust mites also contribute to eczema and hay fever. Found more commonly in mattresses than pillows, pillows are still hosts because dust mites feed on human dander and skin flakes; 10 percent of the weight of a two-year-old pillow can be composed of dead mites and their droppings.

A study published in the January 2006 journal Allergy also found that that the average pillow--whether synthetic or down--contained between four and 16 different types of fungi, with synthetic pillows at the higher end of that range. The most common fungus found in the study, aspergillus fumigatus, is allergenic and contributes to asthma attacks and sinusitis. People with compromised immune systems are particularly affected by it.

Finally, pillows bear the same problems as other fabrics, in that they can be treated with perfluorochemical (PFC) finishes to make them water and stain resistant. Before it was phased out in 2000, the 3M company documented that perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) was used on decorative pillows. Now, some "stain-resistant" bed pillows are being advertised as having "Teflon-treated fabric" shells. Teflon is made using the PFC perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), which was recently labeled a likely human carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Fabric treatments can also contain formaldehyde, another EPA-designated likely human carcinogen.

Environmental

Because pillows are commonly filled with synthetic materials, they can be a terrible drain on non-renewable resources. Polyester, which is a common fill and casing material, is derived from petroleum, as is polyurethane foam.

Conventional cotton used in covers and cotton batting requires extremely high amounts of hazardous synthetic chemicals required for production. Seven of the top 15 pesticides used on cotton are classified as at least possible human carcinogens, and billions of pounds of nitrogen-based synthetic fertilizers are also used, resulting in runoff that can create aquatic "dead zones" in waterways. Dead zones are oxygen-depleted areas lacking sea life, and a third of the world's 146 oceanic dead zones are off of U.S. shores, according to the UN. In the Gulf of Mexico, one covers 7,000 square miles, fed by millions of tons of nitrogen from synthetic fertilizers and animal feces draining into the Mississippi, sparking "red tide" algae blooms that can poison unsuspecting shellfish consumers. This same dead zone was blamed for the tripling of shark attacks off the Texas coastline in 2004.

As for conventional wool production, it also involves the use of pesticides on pastures and chemicals in the feed.

Animal Welfare

Down and feathers are very popular fill choices for pillows, but one which unfortunately is associated with numerous animal rights issues. The material is collected from ducks and geese in one of two ways. Feathers are either plucked while the animals are still alive, or they're gathered after the animals have been killed for meat, says Karen Davis, president and a director of the advocacy group United Poultry Concern. Ducks and geese that are killed for their meat are typically raised in large factory farms where animals are live in filthy conditions and are deprived of access to water and the outdoors.

Because of the animal rights issues associated with down, Pier 1 Imports recently decided to cease using it in all of their pillows. They had been purchasing the down from a subsidiary of Maple Leaf Farms, one of the country's largest poultry producers and one which is known for unsavory living conditions for animals.

Some companies advertise that their down comes from "free-range" animals and gathered during the animals' natural molting phase. However, "free-range" is not a certified label and does not provide any assurance that the feathers were plucked humanely.