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

[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.