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I did not realize the health risks of products until I bought a mattress that arrived on Valentine’s Day in 2007. I have had underlying neurological health conditions caused by growing up near a Superfund site as a child. But nothing has impacted my health like the chemicals I was exposed to from sleeping on that mattress.

It felt like wearing a comfortable glove to sleep on this new mattress. But I kept smelling a strange odor from the time I opened the package, covered it with a mattress pad and started sleeping on it. After two nights, my head began pounding. I was having migraines again

Marley Kimmelman is an Environmental Health and Justice Intern with our Massachusetts office

It was an unseasonably warm November day when I sat down in my political ecology class at Northeastern University. My professor, Danny Faber, an environmental justice champion in the Boston area, was showing us a film called “Toxic Hot Seat.” The topic seemed mundane: flame-retardants. But after sitting through the compelling and borderline shocking documentary, I was outraged. I had just watched a step-by-step breakdown about how flame-retardants, chemicals that are supposed to protect us from