Tampons are one the world's most commonly used menstrual products, and according to a new study, they contain a number of toxic metals including arsenic and lead.
As a UC Berkeley press release about the new study notes, the school's researchers were, to their knowledge, the first to ever measure heavy metals in tampons.
"Concerningly, we found concentrations of all metals we tested for," said Jenni A. Shearston, a Berkeley public health postdoctoral student and the first author of the new paper in Environment International.
In sum, the researchers — who worked with counterparts at Columbia University in New York — found levels of 16 different chemicals in the 14 brands they measured (which were not, we should note, listed in the paper itself.) Along with arsenic and lead, they found concentrations of cadmium, copper, iron, mercury, and nickel.
Although the metal levels varied based on a number of factors, including whether the tampons were from the United States or Europe and whether they were organic or not, "no category had consistently lower concentrations of all or most metals," the press release notes.
For instance, organic tampons had lower lead concentrations than non-organic, but were found to be higher in arsenic.
These chemicals could, as the Berkely statement explains, have gotten into tampons in several different ways. The cotton used in tampons could have absorbed the metals from either the air, water or soil where it grew, or it could have been contaminated by pollution, such as being near a lead smelter. What's perhaps more concerning, however, is the public health scientists' hypothesis that some of the chemicals were added during the manufacturing as antibacterial agents, whitener, pigmentation, or some other process at the industrial level.
While it's certainly alarming to suggest that a product used by a near-majority of those who menstruate contains a bunch of freaky chemicals, the researchers behind this first-of-its-kind paper urge caution before panic.
"We just need more information," Shearston told Today.com in an interview about the research. "What I would like to encourage people to do is support more research and ask more questions about this to try to make research on menstrual products and menstruation a priority."
Ultimately, the onus lies with menstrual product manufacturers to get it right — but as Time magazine noted in its own writeup of the research, chemical testing is not part of the legal requirements for tampons in either the United States or Europe.
"It would be exciting to see the public call for this," Shearston said in the school's press release, "or to ask for better labeling on tampons and other menstrual products."
More on freaky health findings: Scientists Found Microplastics in Every Human Semen Sample They Examined
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