Oh EW.

[permetaform]

"It is worth noting that although tampons (and increasingly sanitary napkins) may come individually wrapped, they are not sterilized; they are merely bleached white."

Is that true? It came from Wikipedia on an entry about menstrual cups, so it's possibly made by someone advertising for menstrual cups but...dude. Individually wrapped and unsterilized? o.0 my inner bio-geek is screaming for the hills. ::shudders and flails::

Comments

[franzeska]

Mmm, bleach. As far as I know, it's true.

[permetaform]

=) there's some good information in the comments below

[etben.livejournal.com]

no idea, but if it is?

EEEEEWWWWW.

(also, hi! haven't talked to you in a while, but that is just me being busy and things, and so hi!)

[permetaform]

=) there's some good information in the comments below

(heya! and ditto for being busy, =) I hope you're doing well? I saw that you'd posted fic but I hadn't had a chance of reading and fbing them...)

[slashygood.livejournal.com]

I though that they aren't medically sterile, but are otherwise as near to sterile as a non-medical product can be? Granted you insert them, but as far as I know, in the UK at least there are certain high conditions they must be produced under. I have an article somewhere about it but meh, tired now.

In the words of Douglas Adams: don't panic! :)

[permetaform]

there's more information in the comments below. I'm not particularly panicking because I use a divacup, but it's just a gross mental image because I've worked with petri dishes before and I get bad cramps. (tho ironically I'm pretty laissez faire about stray bio-matter otherwise)

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

Damn, I better stop chewing them then.

[permetaform]

::gigglefit::

Your vagina isn't sterile.

[chikkiboo.livejournal.com]

Your hands aren't sterile. Your underpants aren't sterile. Toilet paper isn't sterile. The fucking air is not sterile. Cry me a crested raging river, Iowa.

Re: Your vagina isn't sterile.

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

That's my attitude too, in a big way. The sterility freak everyone seems to be going on lately, with antibacterial dishwashing liquid and chopping boards and stuff just leaves me incredibly 'Huh? Why bother?'

Your immune system exists for a purpose. I'm on the side of the debate that too much hygiene is actively a bad idea and encourages allergies. Rural and farmers' kids who play in the dirt all day are repeatedly shown to have a significantly lower rate of allergies.

Re: Your vagina isn't sterile.

[permetaform]

Cry me a crested raging river, Iowa.

::snorfle:: heh, good points, as is commodorified's below

Re: Your vagina isn't sterile.

[teleute12.livejournal.com]

And penises aren't sterile, either, and god knows women have survived inserting *those* into vaginas for, y'know, ever. XD

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

*is nurse's kid*

*is bemused*

First, bleach is a sterilizing agent, as is boiling water. So 'beached white and not sterilised' is at best ingenuous.

I have used tampons as emergency dressings for deep, narrow cuts for two decades.

They may not be sterile enough for use as surgical dressings, but they're damned close.

Secondly, though, clean is fine. The vagina isn't a closed environment, it exists -- and is meant to exist -- in a bacteria-rich environment, and it self-cleans; a fresh tampon is going to be appreciably cleaner than, say, underwear you've had on for half a day. So is a fresh pad; there is NO good reason to sterilise a pad; it's only going to stay sterile until it contacts your public hair, anyway.

I use tampons and I use a cup. I don't sterilize the cup; I only clean it carefully.

I'd worry much much more about tampons with deodorants, excess bleach ... the risk of Toxic Shock comes from your own body's bacteria being collected by a tampon left in too long, which is why you don't leave them too long, not from bacteria introduced by the tampon. Perfect sterility won't help that.

Thirdly, the worst thing you can do is kill off your vaginal flora. That's how people get yeast infections, which in turn leave you vulnerable to other infections because you get skin irritation, which can lead to open raw patches. Vaginal douches and deodorants (except occasional vinegar and water) have the same effect. You could get a perfectly sterile tampon by introducing an antiseptic, but it would be a health disaster.

Fourthly, overuse of antiseptics, antibiotics, and sterilising agents is a significant public health issue and getting worse. This is how you get superbugs, by half-killing germs and leaving them to breed resistant strains.

IOW, tell your inner bio geek to wipe front to back, wear cotton underwear, avoid cleaning your external genital area with anything but soap and water and not too aggressive with the soap, and use whatever menstrual product suits you. :)

[guede-mazaka.livejournal.com]

Hee! You've just confirmed everything I deduced from spending ten minutes reading up at the FDA's website.

Incidentally, the dioxin thing people keep mentioning? Most manufacturers seem to have abandoned that due to public outcry. I've been doing only a little reading, but dioxin levels probably present in a tampon are way low. Way lower than you'd get from eating, say, a dioxin-laced fish or dioxin-contaminated produce, which I consider a more serious and common problem. If it's just the process of bleaching near a permeable membrane, then woe to all the people that go peroxide blonde. That'd be a more direct dose, albeit a slightly less thick patch of skin.

[sidewinder.livejournal.com]

Is nurse's and doctor's grandkid, and is also amused.

Seriously though, this is so dead on the money, my grandfather was bitching about it twenty years ago when no one wanted to hear it:

Fourthly, overuse of antiseptics, antibiotics, and sterilising agents is a significant public health issue and getting worse. This is how you get superbugs, by half-killing germs and leaving them to breed resistant strains.

All that said, I love my cup. No more tampons for me.

[tv-elf.livejournal.com]

Amen to everything. Err, except I'm not a nurse's kid. Bleach is a wonderfully sterile agent. Didn't they find it kills many diseases--but that using it generally kills the patient too?

I think I'll just stick with skipping the green pills and not dealing with any of it. ;) (Do not try this without your doctor oking it.) ((My gyn is a fab guy who has been around long enough to trust his patients.))

[permetaform]

I'm fine with bleach as a sterilizing agent. But like boiling water, I would perfer to not have it stay in contact with any part of my skin for too long.

Personally, I use a divacup, 'cause it catches the blood and tissue matter and keeps it away from my body; I'm disturbed by tampons partially 'cause they catch everything, and then just sit there.

It's less the fact that I'm grossed out by bacteria than the combination of the fact that I've worked with petri dishes before and dislike the associated mental images.

[svmadelyn.livejournal.com]

I went to this workshop a few years back that freaked me out of using tampons ever, basically. They contain rayon and dioxin--so yeah, they're bleached, because people equate white and clean. There are unbleached, 100 percent cotton tampons, but damn if I've ever seen any in a supermarket. Vaginal walls are absorbent. You do the math.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

In North America, this is the most common brand.

I've had bad luck with supermarkets, medium luck with drugstores, quite good luck with health food stores.

[guede-mazaka.livejournal.com]

Vaginal walls aren't that absorbent, actually. They constantly secrete fluids that are meant to sweep bacteria and other pollutants (dust, etc) out of your vagina, and that's why they're damp, not because they're picking up water from the air. It's a oneway traffic thing. If they really were super-absorbent, we couldn't use things like spermicides and lubricants.

The real concern is that the skin of vaginal walls is thin compared to the skin on the rest of your body, and so ruptures more easily. But dioxin and rayon levels in tampons are actually pretty low--some studies show they're lower than levels in your body. But as for pollutants in tampons, I think the worse danger is what happens to all those tampons after they're used. They don't break down fast and they're dangerous as choking hazards and sources of environmental pollution to animals, your water source, etc. So don't ever flush any part of a tampon that is not clearly marked as biodegradable.

[ponderosa121.livejournal.com]

What slashygood said.

It's like worrying if your food is sterile. Or, maybe more like the whole anti-biotic soap thing. Washing the germs away is better than killing them and leaving the hardy ones, but there is extensive freakout at the thought of soap not actually /killing/ the germs on your hands.

[permetaform]

::nods:: yes. It's just...I get this image of like, a fuzzy petri dish. I have no problem putting random shit in my mouth (cockroaches in chocolate and mealworms in bread and all that) but just...::crosses legs::

[guede-mazaka.livejournal.com]

FDA requirements for a tampon

"The device materials should not, either
directly or through the release of their material constituents:
(i) produce adverse local or systemic effects; (ii) be carcinogenic;
or, (iii) produce adverse reproductive and developmental effects." (from link on health testing)

From the document itself:

"For tampon materials, we recommend that you demonstrate that the tampon, in its final manufactured form, does not:

enhance the growth of Staphylococcus aureus
increase the production of Toxic Shock Syndrome Toxin-1 (TSST-1)
alter the growth of normal vaginal microflora.
There are no reference methods or recognized standards for testing S. aureus in tampons. We have included several methods in Appendix B. References 2-7, and 9. We recommend that you specify the test conditions, including cell culture medium and strains of S. aureus and other microorganisms used, and reference the methodology.

TSS is not a concern with the use of menstrual pads.

If clinical studies are necessary, we recommend that the studies evaluate:

irritation
allergy
effects on vaginal microflora
abrasions
ulceration
laceration
residual fiber retention.


And on labeling:

For menstrual tampons, in addition to the labeling information required by 21 CFR 801.430(d) and 21 CFR 801.430(e), user instructions should include information on:

selection of tampon size and absorbency
tampon insertion
how tampon should be worn and wear-time
tampon removal and disposal.
To avoid risk of TSS, we recommend that you include instructions that:

limit wear-time per tampon to no more than 8 hours
advise against the use of tampons “overnight.”

So, no, it does not specifically state that the tampon must be sterile. However, it does provide that the tampon's presence must not alter the natural biological state of the vagina in any way, i. e. be nontoxic and a nonirritant the way an orange seed is (it goes in you, doesn't do anything, and comes back out in your feces). The vagina is a natural opening in your body and as such, is always exposed to the external elements, so not requiring sterility doesn't seem extreme to me. No sterility does not necessarily mean that it isn't clean, or that it isn't free of infectious bacteria, which seems to be your underlying worry.

[permetaform]

nah, it's an underlying squick with the mental image of having a fuzzy petri dish stuck up my vagina. I have no such squick with edible material (blame it on asian food, I suppose), but have really bad cramps. ::wry grin:: And it's not like I don't *know* better, but it's more of the tangential associations.

[apintrix.livejournal.com]

Well,,, not really a good argument against putting non-sterile things into the vagina. Intercourse is the main cause of UTI's.

[isilya]

UTIs aren't caused by intercourse because penises carry bacteria (the penis after all is not inserted into the *urethra*) but because the pressure of intercourse can force bacteria up the urethra. Which means that a boiled dildo would cause the same amount of UTIs as a non-sterile penis.

Penises, on the other hand, can definitely carry thrush/herpes/warts/STD of your choice.

[scarletseraph.livejournal.com]

I find the entire concept of tampons horrifying. *Shudder* (Of course, I feel the same way about the cup, NuvaRing, sex toys, or anything else that goes inside That Place or has to do with That Time. I'm horribly squeamish, though. The only reason I can be fucked at all is because someone else does the putting-in. ^^; Pads at least Go Away with no insertion, ex-sertion, or having to clean and re-use, though...)

I'd be a lot happier if someone would just take those organs and their purpose completely away from me. Leave the orifice so the owner can use it, but make the potential disappear.

[charmax.livejournal.com]

I had never heard of menstrual cups before now, tampons were always my product of choice but after reading what you and others have said about them both, I am now the owner of a mooncup. The thing looks very strange but the benefits sound good. Thank you! *grin*