• by Les Luchter , Staff Writer, August 1, 2024

Let's hear it for Toxic Tampons.

More specifically, let’s applaud a successful campaign of that name from IPG Health’s FCBCure and advocacy group Clean + Healthy, which helped lead to passage by the New York State Senate of a bill banning the sale of menstrual products containing such chemicals as formaldehyde, PFAS, lead, mercury, and toluene.

The fight isn’t over, though. The bill still needs to pass the State Assembly once that body reconvenes next January.

As FCBCure and Clean + Healthy move toward that finish line, a study from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, just published in the August issue of Environment International, provides them with powerful new ammunition: Tampons were found to contain 16 different heavy metals, including lead and arsenic.

The initial phase of Toxic Tampons played off the finding that harmful chemicals in menstrual products contain are also found in pesticides, dynamite and cigarettes.

“If you knew what your tampons were really made of, it would make your skin crawl,” read one ad, which pictured a tampon as a bug spray among dead cockroaches.

“It would blow your mind,” read another ad, picturing three tampons tied together and ready to detonate.

“It would take your breath away,” read a third, showing a tampon as a snuffed-out cigarette in an ashtray.

Toxic Tampons took the cigarette analogy even further, with vending machines dispensing free tampons packaged like cigarettes.

The campaign, which took place both in New York City and the state capital of Albany, also included paid out-of-home and ads in Albany newspapers. Largely targeting young women, materials directed them to ToxicTampons.com to get more info and to take action directed at the legislature. (The site is also where you can see the three ads come to life, with cigarette smoke still smoldering, the dynamite fuse burning, and the cockroaches crawling.)

Social outreach included a partnership with influencer Dr. Taz (Tasneem Bhatia MD), author of “The Hormone Shift.”

So far, Vermont is the only state that has outlawed toxic chemicals in menstrual products, but Clean + Healthy Founder Bobbi Wilding tells Pharma & Health Insider that the Vermont law only covers intentionally added ingredients, while New York’s would also cover unintentionally added chemicals – necessitating marketers to “clean up their supply chains.”

Intentional or not, Wilding says, toxic chemicals “don't belong in products that are used so intimately.”

The new UC Berkeley study strengthens the Toxic Tampons argument, Wilding says, as it found an “unintentional presence of lead and other heavy metals in all different kinds of brands of period products.”

You can expect passage of the law in New York to have a wide impact. “We know that when New York makes changes, it impacts the entire U.S. market.,” Wilding says.

Procter & Gamble is the only marketer to do any lobbying against the bill, but Wilding doesn’t see major obstacles in getting the changes made under the new law.

“These kinds of shifts are things that we've driven in a lot of different industries over time,” she says, pointing particularly to a ban on “flame-retarding” chemicals. “They sound like they should be a good thing, but they're actually incredibly toxic, and were added into things like furniture and clothing and other bedding. Now they're no longer present in those products."

One brand that’s already free of toxic chemicals is Lola, whose tampons, wrapped to look like cigarettes, were dispensed by the Toxic Tampons vending machines.

Looking ahead, Debra Polkes, managing director and creative lead for FCBCure, tells Pharma & Health Insider that phase two of the campaign will focus more on how women “are unintentionally getting into a toxic relationship when they start to use tampons…focusing on the fact that this is a toxic relationship that women are engaged in for a long period of time.  Longer than most marriages, by the way.”