An influencer’s health shattered not long after buying a new mattress — and he recently found out why.
Corey Jacob, 26, said Saturday that he has been waking up with various sicknesses for the past year due to the fact his mattress was filled with fiberglass.
Corey Jacob revealed in a TikTok, which has 8.6 million views, that the cause of his suffering was his $800 mattress that he purchased from Amazon.
Jacob said that for the better part of a year he would spend one hour every morning vomiting before breaking out into full-body hives.
His condition stumped doctors, who initially diagnosed him with heat urticaria, an allergic reaction to hot water, but when he stumbled upon a TikTok PSA about fiberglass, he realized the truth.
After shining his flashlight around his room, he realized the entire place was covered in fiberglass.
“Everything in my bedroom, and my insides and outsides, are completely coated in fiberglass,” said the 26-year-old. “I just thought I had sensitive skin because I keep getting rashes … I’m being cut open by the fiberglass.”
Innerbody Research CEO Eric Rodriguez said that having fiberglass in a mattress should be OK as long as a person is not directly exposed.
“Fiberglass inside a mattress is okay if it stays in,” said Rodriguez to Sleepopolis, a mattress review site, “but if it gets out, it can wreak havoc on your house and your health.”
According to Jacob, the mattress did come with a warning about the material, but since it arrived in a zip-up cover, Jacobs thought it was OK to remove the cover to wash it.
“The second you even open the zipper, not even take the cover off, it just goes everywhere,” Jacob said. “It spreads like fine, fine dust particles.”
It was then Jacob turned to his TikTok followers.
“I forget that, because of my audience size, I can ask for things, and sometimes I will get them,” recalled Jacob, who boasts a whopping 355,000 followers. “So I was like, ‘Well, I might as well try,’ but I did not expect this.”
Jacob said that he put out a plea for a new mattress and was surprised to see that he got nine brand-new mattresses in the mail.
The influencer said that he plans on donating the spare mattresses to a shelter in Cape Cod.
In lieu of spending thousands of dollars on fees, Jacob says that he plans on cleaning his apartment himself.
“This is the most adult thing I’ve ever done,” jokes Jacob, who also said that he would probably have to get rid of 90% of his clothes.
Jacob said that he accepts responsibility for not reading every label, but also wonders why companies continue to use materials that are harmful to people.