Should You Worry About Lead in Tampons?

There seems to always be a potential health scare lurking in things we eat or use in our daily lives, and you can now add tampons to the list. A new study found that tampons from various brands contained toxic metals like lead, arsenic and cadmium.

It’s common to use about 20 tampons per period, so after the average 40-year timespan of having periods, you’ve likely gone through over 9,000 of them. Should you be worried?

Tampons are primarily made with cotton, and researchers note that metals could come from the soil that the cotton is grown in. Another potential source of metals is the added chemicals that some brands use in tampons to control odor or to act as an antimicrobial.

It’s potentially concerning because there’s a higher chance that the skin in the vagina will absorb chemicals compared to skin elsewhere in the body. But so far, researchers aren’t sure that the metals are absorbed by the body, only that they are present in the products.

The study didn’t share what brands were tested, but what we do know is that:

• Products sold in the U.S. versus Europe had higher concentrations of metals
• Levels were higher in non-organic tampons

The study’s findings are being investigated by the FDA, but more research is needed to determine if metals in tampons can lead to negative health effects.