Menstrual Cups vs Tampons and Pads - Part 1
For those of us with a monthly period- sanitary supplies are a part of life.
However, most mainstream menstrual products are filled with harmful chemicals that we shouldn’t be putting anywhere near one of the most delicate parts of our body!
Ive had a toxin free menstrual line-up for over a decade. I not only lost the long list of toxins in my tampons and pads, but I also gained a more consistant- pms symptom free cycle. Im not making any promises about what benefits you can reap, but I will try to make the case why you should really ditch the gross ingredients.
This blog series is going to cover all the risks of two of the most common menstrual products (tampons and pads), a great alternative and its benefits (menstrual cups), and much more! Let’s get started with Part 1: Tampons...
Tampons
On a regular tampon box, you can actually find a warning for Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS). TSS from a tampon is when bacteria grow uncontrollably within the tampon and your vagina. It is typically staph bacteria, but it can be caused by any kind of overgrowth of bad bacteria. Tampons pose a greater risk for this, because of how our periods are supposed to work. When it’s our time of the month, our body is getting rid of all kinds of dead tissue from our uterus. It NEEDS to be let out! Using a tampon can seem like a great way to soak up the flow, but it also works like a cork that holds in all this dead tissue--creating a breeding ground for harmful bacteria. This, however, is one of the more well-known risks of using tampons. There are plenty of other things we need to talk about when it comes to using these things:
Tampons are usually made from two materials: cotton and rayon. Not so bad, right?? Well, the thing is, more than 90% of cotton is treated with a harmful pesticide known as glyphosate, and rayon is bleached with dioxins. Both of these chemicals are highly toxic, but the FDA approves them in tampons because they are only in “trace amounts.” Okay… SO one or two times won’t hurt… Wait, how many tampons does a woman use in her life?? Huffington Post calculates that number to be over 9,000! So these “trace amounts” are not so small anymore! That is consistent exposure every single month for YEARS. Are these pesticides and dioxins really that bad though? Absolutely. The pesticide, glyphosate, has been recognized as a “probable carcinogen for humans.” While dioxins are a group of known environmental pollutants that are harmful to your immune system, hormonal balances, can cause cancer--and the biggest irony--impact your reproductive health. These chemicals aren’t even all you’ll find in your typical box of tampons. Polyethylene, which is a plastic that can leach into your system as it breaks down, is also a common tampon ingredient. Yikes.
Of course, all of these things are AWFUL for our bodies, but where do they go after they’ve been used?? You guessed it--landfills. Remember that 9,000+ average we all have? That’s a LOT of tampons sitting on our home, leaching all the chemicals we just talked about into the ground! Ditching tampons not only helps you but also our beautiful planet. If you really want to continue using them, however, I would suggest using 100% organic cotton ones without applicators. Stay tuned for Part 3, though! It’s all about another great alternative!
However, tampons aren’t the only thing we need to be conscious of...
Read about what’s lurking in your pads in Part 2: Pads
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