how period products became toxic... | The History Of Period Products

imagine a world where the essential products that we use every month because they are essential to use for a natural uncontrollable bodily function imagine now that those products are laced with harmful chemicals and that's not even a distant dystopian nightmare it is a reality that menstrating people are facing right now today with modern period care products despite advances in technology and Healthcare the very items marketed as safe and hygienic have turned out to be sources of toxic exposure on the in the name of convenience and profit this year alarming Studies have surfaced revealing that several

popular tampon Brands contain toxic metals like lead Arsenic and candium the 2024 study led by researchers at UC Berkeley found that tampons used by millions of people every month could expose users to these harmful substances these findings are not just shocking but infuriating considering the Decades of unregulated production and lack of transparency for manufacturers when this study came out I started seeing nearly every news Outlet covering it and I became really infurious created as a minrating person but also as someone who owns a reusable period underwear brand I use reusable period underwear instead of single

use Alternatives because they reduce waste and they save me money but I started realizing that people are turning to disposable products because they think that that is the best option for them it's a thing they've been presented with and now to find out that they are also risking their health because of those same products I wanted to figure out how the hell we got here and there are many different ways to explore that but for me I was really interested in how period care started presumably how it used to be a very natural thing and

how we advance to where we are now in modern society where these essential products are found to have heavy metals in them and I went all the way back from the natural products of Asian civilizations to the invention of disposable products during the Industrial Revolution and surprise surprise in the 20th century the introduction of disposable products marked the beginning of a new era of convenience however with convenience came the use of synthetic materials and chemicals setting the stage for the toxic products we see today but as I already preface and as I'm sure I will

say throughout this video those toxic single-use disposable things that can get expensive are not the only option there are reusable options out there K&S the brand that I own of reusable period underwear is just one of the options but I think before we get into the study we'll talk about alternative methods and we'll talk about all of that but before we get into it knowing that there are studies where most products tested had these harmful chemicals in them I think we should say right up front that there are alternatives that exist and you do not

have to continue using those wasteful harmful ones but the goal of today's video is to answer the question that is in the title how period care became [Music] toxic so we're winding it back to ancient times we're talking, 1550 BCE obviously there weren't manufacturers back then there weren't synthetic chemicals or materials being used in Period care products and period care back in the day was like very very taboo it was a topic that is not well documented because it wasn't talked about very much but it makes sense that people all over the world depending on

what resources were available to them were using all sorts of different things before products were created for people to use on their period so the earliest form of period care that I could find was in ancient Egypt because that is where the oldest medical document that we have comes from that document is called the eers Papyrus and that is an ancient Egyptian medical text which includes references to to menstration and describes the use of linen tampons for menstrual care obviously they didn't use the word tampon cuz that didn't exist back then but essentially what we

can see is that they were using linen and also Papyrus was documented as things that they were using to care for their periods in ancient Greece and Rome we see that lint wrapped around wood was used it was inserted for absorption as well as Lamb's wool because that is what they had available to them in ancient China and Japan folded paper was commonly used particularly in Japan and silk in wealthy regions was something used for its softness in the Middle East early forms of cotton cloth were used for menstration Native American tribes used Moss because

it was absorbent and that was a common choice but also buffalo skin and grass indigenous African cultures were found to have used sea sponges and then obviously grass and leaves northern Europe has been said to use rabbit fur because it was very absorbent and flax fibers were woven into cloth pads of sorts and we start to see a lot of these materials repeating because like I said it is essentially what they had available to them so in South America they would use cotton and plant fibers indigenous peoples used full from alpacas and llamas because that's

what that region has available in Southeast Asia and like Oceana they found to use bar cloth which was made from the inner bark of certain trees and plant leaves which makes sense right so those materials and what people were using is from 1550 BCE the amount of documentation or innovation or change ches that I could find throughout my search was virtually none until the 1900s which I find mind-blowing as someone who minates I think about functioning in the world especially in a world where you don't have conveniences like you are providing for yourself and what

your body is able to do in most cases is how you would drink and eat and bathe and be sheltered like all of those things were very dependent on your abilities or you know your family and your tribe like people lived much more Comm back then but I just think about trying to function as a human being without proper period care and the fact that there was like essentially no innovation and I think like in modern times currently where I'm talking to you from like periods are still kind of stigmatized in a weird way uh

it's still kind of a hush hush topic but I think because that has kind of been that way throughout history it just is not something that was really taken care of and we don't really hear of there was no evidence of other Innovations until the 1900s where menstrual belts enter the chat so that's where we [Music] are it's not certain when the like actual concept of a menstrual belt came about it is assumed or I guess their best guess is that it came about in medieval Europe also going from the thought of like not having

period care and using things like leaves and sticks as period care is like wo but so too is a belt like I think about how comfortable my period underwear are and thinking about having to wear a leather belt on my period is like sounds terrible and throughout my research I did find that people menstrating people back in the day had far fewer periods than we do now due to things like malnutrition and also because people had so many more kids back then that uh there was like a significant amount of their menstrating time like when

people are menting that they were actually pregnant or having kids so they just had less period so maybe the leather belt thing to them just wasn't as um a problem but I just me and my comfortable period underwear just I'm not interested in that they were either made of cloth or leather which one would you prefer and they were typically handmade so these were things that like people would own one of and they were perfectly custom fit to your body and then they would have the ability to take out reusable cloths we're not in the

Disposable era yet we'll get there essentially that is what period care looks like for a long time and then then throughout my research it took me days to find this information the first patent that was given out by the United States government for the adjustable menstrual belt was created by a black woman her name was Mary Kenner and yeah we should say her freaking name because kenner's idea of a sanitary belt would hold pads in place preventing them from shifting when people were on the move and causing blood leakage essentially before that people would wrap

the cloth around the belt and there were no like ability to hold it in place and her invention included a moisture proof napkin pocket which helped prevent leaks and improve hygiene for menraining people the belt also featured easily adjustable straps considering the comfort of individual users which we already talked about how frustrating it would have been to have a leather belt specifically fitted to your body and also to have something that was not able to adjust for bloat or if you change sizes if you had a a child If your circumstances in life changed it

obviously was something that made sense to create and it was created by someone who is for some reason left out of a lot of the history of this not for some reason we know why but you know what I mean however the patent processing was costly and although Kenner had thought up the sanitary belt in the 1920s she could not get the idea patented until 1956 so despite this significant and important advancement in menstrual care kener face significant racial and gender bias initially big companies rumored to be playx and also another one called the sonap

pack company were interested in investing in her invention but when they discovered that she was African-American they declined to Market her product at the time she held the record for most patents awarded to an African-American woman by the US government which is really impressive so I have to include her she's basically a hero then we come to the birth of disposable period products [Music] yay so the first commercially produced disposable period products were called listers towels and they came onto the market around 1888 named after the renowned surgeon Joseph liser who pioneered antiseptic surgery these

towels marked a significant advancement in menstrual hygiene products as much as disposable anything bothers me we know this um I do also have to say that that really liberates a menstrating person from constantly having to change and then care for their materials when the just like natural uncontrollable bodily function that you have is so taboo not having to deal with all of the Care surrounding it I'm sure the creation of disposables at the time was very liberating for people who men state lister's towels were made of cotton and Gauze and designed to be disposable after

one use and they were sold in discreet packaging to make it easier for women to purchase them without embarrassment what I learned throughout this because of this topic being so like Hush Hush is that they would sell products at the pharmacy in paper bags like they had tables set up in the pharmacy they would put the Disposable products that they were selling in brown paper bags unlabeled unmarked and there was a jar on the table where people would drop in the money that they were paying for those products so that people could come and get

one drop their money and run out without ever having to talk to anyone or being super embarrassed to be purchasing those things and I think up until I switched to reusable products I felt very like G about going to the store and buying like the pads and those sort of things um thinking that people would just think it was weird when I checked out I don't I don't know that that fear was real but it was like in my mind so I just thought that was interesting that that was like how people were getting these

things back in the day things really got better for menstrating people around the end of World War I because this is when we started to see the invention of cellulose I guess you say pads or napkins they they kind of use that word interchangeably liner napkin pad I don't really know that what the difference is in all those things but around World War I obviously there were many bandages needed for wounded soldiers and those sort of things um and after the war ended we had warehouses full of this cellulose material that they were using to

make bandages to soak up blood so wouldn't it just make sense that those materials could be used to soak up menstrating people's blood I don't know apparently not apparently that did not cross their minds until they had warehouses full of this material and they needed something to do with them to make a profit to not lose their money to get a return on their investment because that's how our world works or I should say that's how our country Works anyway the American company Kimberly Clark which had supplied cellulose bandages during the war saw an opportunity

to create a new product for menal care they repurposed the Surplus cellulose to produce disposable sanitary pads and in 1920 Kimberly Clark introduced kex the first commercially successful disposable sanitary napkin and fun fact the name CeX comes from combining the words cotton like texture CeX so at this point we are really still in the stages of using like like I said napkins pads liners because there was this other misconception that using a tampon would mess with your Purity like Purity culture and being like virgin like and all those sort of things was really still like

the one of the most important things to people and it was thought of that inserting something to to care for your your period would somehow disturb that and so we're still at the point where like I said liners napkins whatever you want to call it that is the preferred method of caring for your period but also at this time like when I'm saying that when CeX was created where these cellulose pads were being used they don't have adhesive they're just disposable pads that would I guess go in your underwear but there's nothing holding them in

place so then we get to the 1920s 1930s that's when we start to see the um I guess like the acceptance of tampons and alternatives to the the cloth napkins pads those sort of things in the early 1930s Dr Earl hos an American physician developed the modern applicator tampon he received a patent for it in 1931 and this tampon included a cardboard applicator to help insert the tampon without touching it directly which was a significant Innovation for hygiene and ease of use so Dr Earl hos invinc this applicator but it is then purchased by a

woman Dr Hoss's tampon was brought to Market by a business woman gertude tantri who purchased the patent and founded the tanox company in 1936 and Tampax became the first commercially successful tampon brand and revolutionized the menro product market so gertude actually purchased this patent with money from her own savings she had no like big business behind her like we know the name Tampax is such a huge business today but the founding of these products by a woman B A businesswoman who purchased that patent she just did it with her own savings she just wanted to

see the development of period care for menstrating people okay so I thought that was a cool little part of History we we love a business woman that was the first time I had really seen that word used throughout my research so I kind of like that even though we're talking about disposables which fast forward to the 2000s is just a little bit frustrating but back in the day they couldn't have really seen what we see now so we have to talk about it from my perspective a little bit tack quickly gained popularity due to its

innovative design which offered women a more comfortable and convenient alternative to the menstrual products available at the time from what I can find Tampax is also who introduced the use of cotton into menstrual care products before that it was like the cellulose um and we talked about linen and cloth and all those sort of things but cotton Tampax is kind of the leader of introducing that material to menstrual care products and their marketing strategy is the biggest reason for their success because like I said at the time inserting something into you was seen as like

problematic bad something people did not want to do so Tac got to work on combating that misinformation and educating their customers on the ease of usage and safety and without that sort of strategy I don't think we would see tampons in the way that we do today I honestly don't even think that we would see the destigmatization of periods to the extent that we do today if gertude hadn't taken that marketing approach to bring tacks to the market and make it be successful but because they chose to focus their marketing efforts on education that is

the core of how they became successful as the demand for TAC grew the company expanded its production capabilities and distribution networks tpox became widely available in pharmacies and stores across the United States and eventually internationally but as all these disposables were coming onto Market there was a reusable version okay throughout all of this happening and it was called the tacet cup the tacet was a reusable menstrual cup made from rubber it was decided to be inserted to collect menure Bud rather than absorb it like tampons or pads and it was offered as a money-saving and

environmental saving product at the time but tampacks really had their marketing game unlock I mean they had really good educational information throughout their marketing like I said they had a a robust Marketing System that way and they had discret packaging which to people back then was really important and the tasset just didn't have that level of visibility and support so it never developed the means the money to be able to Market itself uh at the level that Tampax did that is how we end up with disposables single use becoming the norm and the development of

this and this whole story that we're telling about menstrual care products and and those sort of things I think begins a very significant and important trajectory of realizing that people can make money from women in today's economy current day 2024 women drive so much of the consumer economy and before this era that were talking about around the 1920s 1930s they were not seen as a significant part of the consumer economy but the commercial success of tampacks really propelled women as being like the ideal consumer and someone that marketing could in some cases manipulate in some

cases just like educate and tell the story to but this really I think cemented women as the drivers of the consumer economy it gets even better because then the invention of adhesives comes on the market so this product was developed by Johnson and Johnson and I specifically wanted to know what team what people whose names could I attach to the creation of stayfree which is the first adhesive pad on the market but there is no person or team there are no names behind the invention of this adhesive pad it is just the corporation Johnson and

Johnson do we know who created that in a lab in a in a I don't know a facility one day we really don't at least not that I could find but we do know that it was Johnson and Johnson and we do know that they knew how to make it profitable so Johnson and Johnson and developed stayfree and it was founded in 1971 so that is how recent like adhesive pads have been available which is like kind of a long time ago but also kind of not because my mom would have been like getting close

to menstrating age at that time like think about that some of our moms were alive well actually a lot of you watching this your mom was probably alive before the invention of an adhesive pad existed and think about just how normalized it is now right in our culture I think it's interesting to see how quickly things can happen like that so the invention of Stay Free was 1971 that's where we're at but we fast forward a bit to 1985 which is when the first time the word period was spoken on television and it was of

course in a commercial does your life change once a month because of your period remember there's a feeling with Tex it can actually change the way you feel about your period I just can't believe how recently that is like I was born 8 years after that that is wild it is wild how stigmatized something that is so natural and I can't emphasize enough uncontrollable was taboo but between 1970 and now not a whole lot happened except for the early 2000s we started to see a rise of [Music] environmentalism there has been more of an adoption

of the reusable versions like the reusable period underwear that I talked about the menstrual cup which I know plenty of people who use and do do love but it's not the majority of people disposables in single use is very very normal so in this video I think it makes sense to talk about how much waste is generated by the normalization of these single use products how many disposable period products does the average person use in their lifetime the menual cycle length is around 28 days and the average menstration period there is 5 days and the

estimated amount of products used per day is 4 to six tampons or liners either one and currently the menting age is from 12 to 50 which is about 38 years so 12 Cycles a year times 38 years at five products per day which is around 25 products per cycle equals around 300 single- use products per year multiply that by 38 years and you get around 11,400 single use disposable period products used throughout a men trading person's Lifetime and that number seems like a lot because it is that is a lot of single-use disposable products but

I find that a lot of times when people bring up this number and this conversation it is mostly focused around waste because yes those products end up in landfills or in our sewage system or in our oceans our water and all that is a concern yes but there are so many more concerns because the creation of those products also has a significant impact on the planet so I wanted to outline some of the things that have to happen in order to get those single-use products that we use on average 11,000 of in our lifetimes so

raw material sourcing like Point bling period a lot of raw materal materials have to be sourced for not only the cotton in the materials but also the cardboard used if it's a cardboard applicator and the packaging that those things come in the plastic that that comes in plastic applicators all those sort of things there's so many raw materials that have to be sourced for including paper which requires deforestation clear cut land to grow the type of trees that we use to cut down to make paper and that leads to deforestation loss of biodiversity habitat loss

all of that is associated with these single- use products and then there is cotton which has a plethora of issues growing it it is one of the dirtiest crops in the world it requires a ton of land a ton of water and so apart from the land use and the water use for the cotton there is the pesticides the herbicides the killing of all of the microorganisms and the insects and how that impacts the food chain when we use those materials to grow single-use products have to keep that in mind and then there's the impact

of bleaching the cotton the dioxins used for bleaching imp our water sources and accumulate in the food chain and I talked about water use used to grow all of these materials but there's also significant water use in the manufacturing process to take something from a crop to a material takes a significant amount of water and speaking of the water use in the manufacturing process there is also the energy use in the manufacturing process along with other greenhouse gas emissions which leads to pollution and climate change and then there's Transportation emissions not only to get the

cotton from Farm to the manufacturer but then to get it from the manufacturer to all over the world and then there's improper disposal which leads to all sorts of water pollution issues including microplastics Marine debris which harms wildlife and then the entire ecosystem and there are all of these additives that seep into the natural environment that lead to hormone disruption even if you're not the person using disposables disposables and the materials the chemicals that are in them lead to hormone disruption for other people which yes hormone disruption from these chemical that are used in Period

products is a problem for humans but it has also been found to be a problem for wildlife and then there's like landfill use which yeah filling up our landfills with disposable materials I already said is is is a problem but we don't often talk about the transportation needed to get products from your home to the landfill and the emissions that come along with that and the materials needed to create the trucks like it is it is never ending the impacts of the way that things that we buy impact the planet is never ending it is

impossible to conceptualize how much impact the things that we buy have on the planet let alone disposable products used for a very small period of time that will be on this planet for a long time but the impacts to make those things is even longer and incomprehensible and so we know there are significant environmental impacts from single use products single use period products but there are also Health impacts is kind of the jumping off off point for me wanting to make this video so let's go over the study that happened this year that found a

lot of metals and toxins in Period care products so the scope of the study were 30 tampons from 14 Brands and 18 product lines analyzed for 16 metalloids but they did not name any of the brands which I'm not really sure I understand why or how maybe the legal system works because of how sue happy people are in this country in particular and how frustrating it is that corporations have that ability not adhere to being transparent or regulations that may exist but then when someone calls you out for it and finds you guilty of it

you can sue them even though you're definitely the one in the wrong so these are the 16 um metal or metalloids that they tested for but they were particularly looking for three that are really important which is lead Arsenic and canned min numb I don't want to say that wrong and I'm not super familiar with that one like I am with lead and arsonic but they don't sound good and the findings were that all 30 tampons from 14 different brands tested positive for at least one of those 16 medals that they tested for this I

found very weird and concerning but higher lead concentrations were in the non-organic tampons and higher levels of arsenic were in the organic tampons and the researcher said that the metals could enter tampons through contaminated raw materials like the cotton that we talked about or could be added intentionally for Odor Control pigmentation or antibacterial purposes and the study emphasized that the material around where you insert tampons is much more observant absorbent absorbent probably that to but the that area is much more absorbent than most of our body and statistics say that between 50 and 80% of

menstrating people use tampons for their period some of the long-term health risks associated with these materials are things like dementia infertility diabetes and of course cancer also damage to your liver kidneys brain cardiovascular nervous and endocrine systems so yeah basically everything and I think that everyone should be so outraged that number one a study like this has not really been done before I was reading that this is like the first study of its kind and also that these brands are not more transparent about what they are adding and what is in these things and also

that there are not regulations already existing to prevent this the fact that it is 2024 and this is when we're finding out about this this is when like regulations hopefully will be created after more studies like this are done hopefully soon we should all be outraged about it we should all be very very angry that all of those realities exist we should be demanding that products do not have that we should be demanding that the companies that we give our money to are more transparent with what they are putting in those products and I really

don't think that regulation should have to exist to say that lead and arsenic should not be in those products that we're paying for but hell if we have to create legislation to make sure that it's not we should be demanding that they do that we should absolutely be fighting for those things because even though I don't use those products I haven't in a very long time I know that the majority of minrating people do and the fact that we are being subjected to those things against our will against our knowledge really is infuriating so with

all of that in context and the fact that this study didn't name any Brands uh I can't necessarily be like don't go support one of these 30 tampons that were found to have these materials in them because we don't know exactly who they are but I just wouldn't feel comfortable spending my money on absolutely any of them at this point until there's enough transparency in testing to say that the thing that I'm buying doesn't have that in it and at the end of the day I think that's what I advocate for on this channel in

my life it's how I like to live my life is not giving money to people who I do not trust and who I do not want to see do more of whatever they're doing I do not want to see more companies profiting at the cost of people's health and I do not want to vote with my dollar for more of that to happen so at the end of the day I would just remove my money from that altogether if you're watching this video I hope that you have found a reusable version for your menstrual care

at this point but if you haven't I obviously own a brand of reusable period underwear and I think they are the most comfortable ones that you are ever going to find but we also strive to be inclusive and we are tested for Pas and it's up on our website so that you can see that test we try to do our best to be transparent and when you vote with your dollar you absolutely should be voting for companies who have that transparency aside from that because we know between 50 and 80% of minrating people are using

these tampons we also should be advocating for transparency from those Brands and we also should be advocating for regulations around this or laws we should be advocating to hold those people accountable who are doing that and also be advocating for more studies and more funding to be done in this area those are all the takeaways and like calls to actions I've got for you but I hope you did find this really informative or entertaining or um kind of like made you more aware of what's going on in the world so that you can tell someone

else about it so send this video to another menstrating person who absolutely needs to hear it and because of the topics that we talked about and because of the solutions to those topics today I want to leave you off with do your best and at for the rest bye guys