It’s 9pm on a Tuesday night. The local supermarket is painfully busy- populated by bored checkout chicks who are spurred on by brimmed baskets. The scene is lit with a florescent glare, and it flickers over customers that remain unimpressed with the weekly specials. At the back of the line, a girl shifts forward in her Ugg boots. Glamorously dressed in pyjamas, accessorised with smudged mascara and a messy bun- the girl clutches at Panadol, chocolate, and a pack of tampons in her right hand. Only the essentials.
Out of her items, most people would assume that the most harmful product is the sweet poison of chocolate.
Others would argue that Panadol presents its own dangers, with up to 235 Australian overdoses of the drug each year.
However, it’s the unassuming cardboard box, brimmed with cotton menstrual products, that may pose the biggest threat to this girl’s wellbeing.
Since their creation in 1931, at the hands of physician Earl Haas, tampons have established themselves as a go to period product for women- with a Harvard study concluding that 47% of women use them during their menstrual cycle.
Despite their obvious popularity and the 93 years the product has under its belt- It was only this year that tampons were tested for chemicals, and it was discovered that maybe they aren’t as safe as initially perceived.
Though the possible harm of tampons was already seen through ‘toxic shock syndrome’, a new study published in Environment International revealed that tampons contain dangerous metals and toxins in their fibres.
Sixteen metals including arsenic, copper, iron, manganese, mercury, nickel and lead were tested for in 30 tampons over 14 brands- and concerning concentrations of every metal evaluated were present. Existing harmful toxins were found in both organic and non-organic cotton tampons – with non-organic boasting higher lead concentrations, but organic containing stronger arsenic levels.
Though this is only low-level exposure through a tampon, toxic metals like arsenic and lead have been shown to contribute to dementia, infertility, diabetes, and cancer. The metals can also cause harm to the liver, kidney and brain while additionally damaging the nervous, endocrine, and cardiovascular systems. Maternal health and foetal development also have potential to be significantly impacted by these toxins.
The vagina’s natural absorbency and permeable nature as well as the tampons placement mean that these toxins would theoretically be absorbed and travel into the bloodstream faster than they could anywhere else. This potential toxicity and newfound danger of tampons leaves the female population increasingly predisposed to a number of diseases and health issues.
Though presenting concerning results, Senior author of the study Kathrin Shilling urges consumers not to worry.
“I do not want people to panic, but to be aware that heavy metals have been found in these menstrual products,” she said. “Obviously, the next step is to do research that would show if the metals leach from the tampon into the body.”
Research surrounding tampons and their suspected toxicity will continue, partnering with the FDA to fully determine the impacts of these findings. It is likely that tampon regulations and testing will be made hasher as a result, and clear product labelling introduced to make consumers aware of potential risks.
This is not medicine’s first embarrassingly late discovery in women’s health — nor will it be the last. Historically, women’s health has lagged behind, hidden by a cloud of mystery that society is too lazy to uncover. Take for example when NASA suggested sending a woman to space with 100 tampons for 6 days in 1983; more recently, in 2023, sanitary pads were tested using blood for the first time; just last week, a new study found results linking popular IUDs to breast cancer.
So why does this keep happening? Why is the progress of women’s health and research creeping along with a sloth like pace instead of racing into this new generation of innovative technology and medicine?
At the core of the medical system, is a quiet inequality. Spanning over generations, it sits uncomfortably: an unspoken truth accompanying women through countless waiting rooms and disappointing misdiagnoses.
A male-default bias was generated as early as Ancient Greece, where figures such as Aristotle saw the female body as “a mutilated male body” or “the male turned outside in.” It was only in the 17th century that ovaries finally shook the name ‘female testicles’, and the ‘female scrotum’ was declared a uterus. Despite this eventual acknowledgement, they remained semblances of true body parts- incomplete or disformed organs that failed to meet medical expectation.
This perception of the female body has remained deeply embedded, often subconsciously, in the field of medicine- cemented through history and now holding an invisible role within our society.
A 2006 review of the United States’ online database for medical-school courses, revealed that only 9 out of the 95 institutions in the system offered courses specialising in women’s health. In 2008, it was found that amongst the 16 329 images utilised in American medical textbooks, male bodies were shown three times as often as female bodies to portray ‘neutral body parts’.
In her pursuit for gender equality, feminist activist, author, and journalist, Criado Perez reveals that the medical industry is complicit in the harm of women through persisting norms.
“The male norm continues to go unquestioned by many today, with some researchers continuing to insist, in the face of all the evidence, that biological sex doesn’t matter,” Ms Perez said.
“For millennia, medicine has functioned on the assumption that male bodies can represent humanity as a whole. As a result, we have a huge historical data gap when it comes to female bodies, and this is a data gap that is continuing to grow as researchers carry on ignoring the pressing ethical need to include female cells, animals and humans, in their research.”
While some doctors maintain that sex differences are irrelevant, others are against the inclusion of female research due to the complexity of the female body- with the historical gap making it difficult for advancement in the field and their fluctuating hormones remaining an adversary nobody wants to encounter. Sex and gender are seen as a burden weighing down discovery, dragging down the medical field with their costs, complexity, and unpredictability. Why have equality when you can have simplicity?
In another argument, it is claimed that research fails to occur as women are harder to recruit due to their varying social and familial responsibilities, though this debate lacks validity when it is clearly recorded that women represent 90 per cent and 92 per cent of participants in the trial of products such as facial wrinkle correction.
When the highly anticipated ‘female Viagra’ was released in 2015, a trial was run using 23 men and two women to test the drugs’ negative reaction with alcohol. As the contrasting sexes process alcohol differently, the non-sex-disaggregated data failed to effectively represent women- this study and many others like it leaving women’s health once again neglected and misreported.
University of Wollongong PHD candidate and Feminist Screen, Media and Cultural Studies Expert Amy Boyle identifies a lack of women in STEM as well as a lack of funding for them, as a core issue leading to the prioritisation of men’s interests and the devaluing of women’s health and female centric research.
“In a white, heteropatriarchal and capitalist society, women’s bodies are considered less important because they are assumed to carry out reproductive and unpaid labour, rather than productive and paid labour,” she said.
“As a result, there has been, and continues to be, less of an investment in their health because they are, quite literally, considered to be less of less value to society. In terms of everyday health issues, unless they affect men too, many of these are understudied and underfunded, and women are not included or included at lesser rates in medical trials, making it very difficult to advance women’s health.”
In Australia, period care items are treated as retail or vanity products as opposed to the essential health care items that they are. As a result, there is lax manufacturing regulations and competitive pricing that ultimately prevents positive access to this form of healthcare. It was only five years ago that the taxing of ‘feminine hygiene products’ was removed in the Commonwealth and yet women with periods are still placed at a disadvantage as the NDIS continues to remove funding for menstrual products.
In order to generate long-term change and support the women that currently slip through the gaps of health care and research, Amy Boyle believes there will have to be a number of actions taken such as deeming period products, procedures and care, a need, rather than a ‘lifestyle’.
“There would have to be changes including better education of nurses and doctors, such as more education on gender bias, female anatomy, female and women’s health issues,” she said.
“The recruitment of women and funding for women-centric projects/research and greater government subsidies for women’s and family health products (including menstrual products, pregnancy prevention and termination products/procedures) would also be necessary.”
Already, discourse surrounding periods has grown, the chatter growing louder and becoming a topic on social media and in classrooms, with universities such as UOW even providing period products in their Library bathrooms.
As I stand in the hygiene aisle at my local supermarket I am overwhelmed with choices, and surprised to see that tampons have begun to be edged out by a range of unconventional products. Period undies, cups, discs, liners dominate the selection. Varying boxes line the shelves and though they all have differing shapes, sizes, and colours they all stand for the same core purpose. To effectively serve women.
Menstrual product company, Hello period! saw its period discs, cups and reusable pads fly off the shelves when Environment International’s study was released to the public.
CEO and Co-founder of the brand, Robyn McLean, is encouraged by the support of sustainable products, growing diversity of period care and decreasing stigma surrounding periods.
“When we founded Hello Period in 2017 one of our key goals was normalise period talk,” Ms McLean said.
“We wanted to give people with periods more choice. For decades we’ve been told tampons and pads are the only options to manage periods. Honestly, it can be life changing,” she said.
These new alternatives are not only safe, chemical free and healthier for women but also the environment. While tampon’s chemicals have potential to leach through the uterus, they similarly leach into our planet with their plastic.
The average tampon or pad will take 500-800 years to effectively decompose in landfill; multiply that with the 18,000 single use tampons or pads that the average woman will use in her period lifetime. In comparison, period undies or discs hold up to five times the average pad or tampon, and users only need eight over their period lifetime- meaning that sustainable period care is not only better for your body and the environment, but also your bank balance.
As we journey towards the future, alternative forms of period care continue to prove themselves as positive tools to support women- leading us into a bright future that advocates for open period discussions and has an awareness of women’s health while closing the gap of medical inequality that has long plagued society.