Today’s “being a woman is super fun” news: a recent study found heavy metals present in tampons.
In the study, 30 tampons from 14 brands were tested for 16 different metals—including lead, arsenic, and mercury. While not every tampon contained all 16 heavy metals, they all did contain lead—including the organic ones. Neat!
The study, conducted by researchers at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and published in Environmental International, is the first to measure metals in tampons. This is pretty wild, considering an estimated 52% to 86% of people who menstruate in the U.S. use tampons. Not to mention, vaginal tissue is super absorptive, and chemicals absorbed vaginally go straight into the bloodstream without detoxification.
It’s unclear exactly how these metals are getting into our tampons. One thought is that cotton is contaminated before it gets made into tampons, as cotton plants can accumulate metals from things like contaminated soil and pesticides.
So what does this mean for those of us who use tampons?
“For the moment, it’s unclear if the metals detected by this study are contributing to any negative health effects,” according to a UC Berkeley press release, adding that more research is needed to see how much of these metals are leaching out of the tampons and being absorbed.
This is why it’s so important that women are involved and included in medical research, an area from which we have historically been excluded. Why? In part because we have hormonal changes that apparently make inclusion mORE CoMPLICaTed AnD ExpenSive.
Yep, that’s a totally valid reason to exclude women. /sarcasm
Gender bias in medical research means that women are at risk for adverse drug reactions. “Drugs that are potentially beneficial to women may be eliminated in early phases of clinical testing when the test group does not include women and no benefits are manifest in male subjects.” And, oh yeah, women could be unknowingly putting toxic metals in their vaginas for years.
We deserve better. Hopefully this is just the first of many studies on this topic.
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