what's more toxic carpet or mattress? help me decide waht to do!

[yukookoo]

just moved into a house we are renting. (from a house we owned and had ver non toxic, wood o voc paint etc) The rental has carpet and landlord will not budge on removing it, we even offered to pay to restore the wood under the carpets.

DD has a boric acid, not regular flame retardant, but mainstream mattress with an amazing 3 inch wool topper on it, she has a full size bed and dh cosleeps with her.

In "our" room we have a queen boxspring and mattress about 5 years old, main stream flame retardant and all I think its a serta.

I am very sensetive to chemicals, coslept with dd in her bed for the past 2 years and love her bed

I need to do something about our queen size bed cause im suffering. Our mattress is pillow top really tall and thats one thing I like is being far away from the carpet. I do have an austin air purifier in the bedroom but between the old nasty carpet, fresh nasty paint and boxspring and mattress i just feel gross, cant sleep and wake up stuffy, headache, soar throat etc.

But dont have money at the moment so im thinking either

a - get rid of both boxspring nad mattress, get a futon mattress and lay it directly on the slats - 500$

get a futon mattress lay it on boxspring 500$

but both these choices leave me closer to the carpet

or get a topper and lay it intop of mattress or get a topper and lay it ontop of boxspring and get rid of mattress....
all 300$ or so

WWYD?

[Dingletwitz]

I might give the carpet a good steam cleaning ($40 or so) or wrap the mattress etc in one of those allergy barriers or an old fashioned vinyl wrapper if those chems don't get to you. Then I'd be cruising alternate rentals....carpet is nasty, I agree, especially in a rental..you never know what kind of yuck is down in there..someone could have used some nasty carpet powder or something. I'd also get the windows open as much as possible, even in the cold, just to get it aired out. You could also do an experiment and see if by sleeping in dd's bed now you have the same issue==then you know it's the carpet versus the bed.

[FloridaBorn]

Landlords who put down carpet are nuts.