Are your tampons toxic?

Did you know, the average woman will use approximately 16,800 tampons/ sanitary pads in her life time? That's a lot of sanitary products!

Ever wondered whats in them? Yeah I hadn't either, not for a long time. Not till I started to think about TSS - Toxic Shock Syndrome. All tampons come with the TSS label warning.

Toxic Shock Syndrome is a rare but serious medical condition that is caused when the bacteria, Staphylococcus Aureus gets into your bloodstream. It has been linked to the use of tampons.

Please take the time to read this heartbreaking story HERE, it really makes you think about TSS.

So in the very short of it, yes tampons have the potential to be very toxic to our bodies. 

So whats in these bad boys?

According to Tampax.com:

The Applicator is usually made of tightly wound cardboard or plastic with pigments of colour
The Absorbent core is usually made of cotton or rayon 
The thin fabric around the absorbent core is usually made of rayon & polyester or polyethylene & polypropylene 
The string is usually made of cotton &/or polyester polypropylene braid
The thread used to attach the string to the core is usually made from cotton wrapped polyester or polyester
The fragrance if applicable - fragrance ingredients like those found in other women's feminine products - I'm sorry but could that be any more obscure?!!

So each ingredient is synthetic except for the cotton, which would have been through a bleaching process so that its nice a white. 
Both polyethylene & polypropylene are forms of plastic. 
Rayon is a manufactured regenerated cellulose fiber.
Polyester is another synthetic fiber.

All these fibers can get caught inside our bodies during the use of tampons, collecting bacteria which can lead to illness and TSS.
The bleaching process that the ingredients go through can also leave traces of dioxin in the product, and studies show that dioxin can collect in your bodies fatty tissues. Dioxin can cause cell abnormalities & suppress your immune system.



In my next post I will share an amazing alternative to tampons and my experience in using it!

flushed away

did you know that water companies across England & Wales are getting hundreds of calls a day about sewage blockages!?!

one of the main culprits..."flushable wet wipes"

wet wipes have been around for decades. we use them to remove make-up, wipe our babies bottoms, wipe our bottoms & clean the house. there are so many forms of wet wipe on the market & many of them have been found to be made up of three quarters polyester, which makes them extremely tough.

in the last few years 'flushable' bum wipes have been pushed by brands such as Andrex to the consumer. yes they do a fab job at cleaning your botty, but are in no way flushable. during the testing stage, yes after minutes & minutes of being sloshed back and forth they do eventually break down, but this is not a true representation of what happens in your toilet at home.

you flush your toilet, there is a little swirl or gush of water to push everything down & that is it!

so thanks to many of us using these little wipes and chucking these & god know's what else down the toilet, daily sewer blockages across the UK are a big & expensive deal! we're talking about £1 million a month just on cleaning out sewer blockages. & that's nothing on the detrimental effects wet wipes have on the environment!

i must point out that its not just wet wipes that end up down our toilets; tampons, sanitary towels, condoms & nappies all add to the problem.

so to taking a look at the environmental damage this stuff is causing, did you know it can take up to 100 years to biodegrade! with the constant use they will accumulate for many years to come.

with our flushing these items they can end up getting washed out to sea & the polyester fibers can clog up an animal's stomach if ingested, effectively making them feel full & thus causing a risk of starvation.

these fibers can also be swallowed by barnacles, scallops, crabs & fish, which runs the risk that they could get into the human food chain.

everything we humans do has a knock on effect on our environment. the safest way to dispose of any of these products, is to bag it & bin it. i have a draw full of nappy sacks in my bathroom so if either of us use a wipe we pop it in a bag & put it in our bathroom bin. its such an easy thing to do & it saves our sewers & helps the environment.