When you're growing up sometimes you hear or see things that you believe to be true until you grow up. When I was a young kid, I used to think that when TV was in black and white, the world was black and white too. I remember asking my parents when I was a kid "what was it like when you finally got to see colors?" They couldn't help but just laugh and roll their eyes.

Were you ever told if you crack your fingers too often you'll get arthritis? I know I heard that one growing up. Not true. Do you remember being told, "this will be on your permanent record" when you were in elementary school? I'm not saying schools don't keep records of kids but they surely aren't permanent ones. One of my favorites was "if you keep making that face, it will get stuck that like." I stopped making goofy faces at my parents immediately.

Have you ever seen or heard that you "can't remove your mattress tags and if so, it's punishable by law" Is this another one of those urban legends or if you remove a mattress tag in Iowa, can you be in some kind of trouble?

Is It Illegal To Remove Mattress Tags In Iowa?

The good news for you is no, it's not illegal to remove mattress tags in Iowa. To be fair, it's not illegal to remove mattress tags in any state in the U.S. This wasn't always some urban legend, however. At one point in the early 1900s, these tags did exist, and they were actually designed to protect mattress consumers.

According to Mattress Clarity, "some mattress manufacturers were putting old, used bedding materials into new mattresses." It's possible you could find unsavory materials such as horse hair, corn husks, food waste, old rags, or anything a manufacturer could come by. This could lead to customers buying mattresses full of bacteria when they believed they were purchasing something brand new.

According to Mattress Clarity, federal and state regulators wanted to put a stop to this practice and decided that "all mattresses should come with a label listing the exact contents of a mattress, as well as all of the materials used to make it.

The original goal of this was "to make sure that manufacturers and retailers didn’t try to remove the tags and sell the mattress as new if it contained recycled materials, the tags stated that they can’t be removed under penalty of law."

If you remove a mattress tag from a mattress you've purchased in Iowa, there isn't any kind of legal trouble you could be in whatsoever. It should be kept in mind that if you do remove a mattress tag, it's possible you may lose out on your warranty.