State lawmakers in California, Vermont and Colorado are working to ban the sale of period products containing highly toxic “forever chemicals”, or PFAS, nearly a year after a report revealed the chemicals were found in everything from tampon applicators to period underwear.
Despite a growing awareness of the dangers and ubiquity of PFAS, federal regulators have been slow to respond to the bombshell 2023 report from the University of Notre Dame, in which researchers found forever chemicals in various menstrual products including those mentioned above and more. Federal bills designed to address PFAS in everyday consumer items – including period products – stalled last year in large part due to chemical industry lobbyists.
“This is clearly an urgent women’s health issue, nobody can dispute that,” said the California assemblymember Diane Papan.
Faced with federal inaction and mounting research on the dangers of forever chemicals, lawmakers – all of whom are women in mostly Democratic-led states – have scrambled to enact new legislation that would force manufacturers to eliminate the use of PFAS in period products.
Minnesota became the first, and so far only state, to enact legislation that phases out PFAS-containing period products, along with other PFAS-containing household goods such as children’s toys and cookware, just last year. California is poised to follow suit.
Papan introduced legislation last month that would deploy the California department of toxic substances control to provide oversight of period product manufacturing. Lawmakers in the state have since begun to phase out PFAS in everyday household products such as food packaging, clothes and cosmetics.
Somehow, Papan said, period products remain unregulated.
“We’ve looked at removing PFAS from astroturf, from cleaning products. Tampons should also be front and center. It’s such an intimate use of a product,” she said. “We need to get something on the books urgently to protect women, to protect people who menstruate.”
PFAS are a class of about 15,000 chemicals often used to make products resistant to water, stains and heat. They are known as “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down, and they have been linked to cancer, high cholesterol, liver disease, kidney disease, fetal complications and other serious health problems.
Last year, California researchers found new evidence that PFAS exposure might be especially dangerous for women’s health: multiple harmful chemicals, including forever chemicals, were found in the blood of 302 pregnant women, as well as in the umbilical cord blood of their babies.
“Any research that looks at the safety of menstrual products is extremely limited,” said Alexa Friedman, senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group. “There’s even less research that looks at PFAS in menstrual products, but we know from looking at other kinds of PFAS exposure that these chemicals can harm fertility and other elements of reproductive health.”
Forever chemicals also work as “endocrine disruptors”, a moniker given to any substance that interferes with the body’s transmission of hormones – or even mimics them. This causes cascading effects that may be difficult to predict or understand, impacting metabolism, energy levels, reproduction, development and mood.
While there’s limited research available on the health effects of PFAS-containing period products, Friedman is concerned about how these chemicals might be absorbed through the vulva and vagina.
“Period underwear, liners, these items are in direct contact with the vagina for an extended period of time,” Friedman said. “It’s possible that these are being absorbed into the body quite rapidly.”
The skin on the vagina and vulva is more sensitive than the skin on other parts of the body, with doctors often using the vagina as a way to quickly deliver medication into the bloodstream. This absorptive property means that PFAS-containing period products might pose a higher health risk, compared to other PFAS-containing household goods.
PFAS experts warn that without government or regulatory oversight, it is near-impossible for buyers to know which period products contain forever chemicals and which products are safe. Thinx, a period underwear brand that long advertised as “organic, sustainable and non-toxic”, settled a class-action lawsuit last year after researchers discovered that the product contained PFAS.
“These types of marketing claims that we’ve seen, especially recently, with terms like ‘all natural’, those terms mean pretty much nothing,” said Friedman. “Right now, it’s hard for anyone to figure out what the best purchase is, me included.”
