You Don’t Have to Worry About Toxic Metals in Your Tampons
Reading Time: 4 minutesI’m an Epidemiologist Who Fact-Checks the News. There’s One Kind of Story I’m Constantly Debunking., A recent study finding lead in period products spurred concern. It’s a very familiar kind of story., Toxins in tampons: Why you don’t have to worry about t
Every few weeks, we are treated to a very similar story. Maybe it’s your shampoo, maybe your pantry staples, or maybe some other product that you have somewhere, buried deep in the cupboards of your house. Regardless of the details, the general vibe is the same. There’s a thing that you own, that you have used for years, and it might be killing you. Call it the ‘toxic household product’ story.
The latest toxic household product story is about tampons. As tons of media outlets have been reporting for weeks, a scientific study came out recently that found heavy metals in tampons. Some of these metals are indeed toxic, including lead and cadmium, and so people have been rightly worried about their health. Maybe you were sent this article by your mom, or maybe you dropped it into a group chat and concerned discussion ensued, or maybe you showed it to your wife. It’s a natural instinct! It’s not great to hear that you or your loved ones might’ve been poisoning yourselves with lead without knowing it, especially with a piece of cotton that literally goes inside your body.
The problem with this story—as with so many others in the genre—is that the reality of the findings is not nearly as nerve-racking as the fearmongering headlines. Yes, some researchers did find lead in tampons. But let me tell you, as an epidemiologist who looks at studies like these professionally: The levels of lead in the tampons were so low that even if you ate dozens of tampons, you’d still probably not be able to absorb enough of the metal to harm you. There was so little lead that to extract any of the toxin at all, the researchers had to boil the tampons in acid—a somewhat different environment from that of your average vagina. It’s possible, in theory, that these minuscule fractions of lead could be a problem at a population level. That is, perhaps out of hundreds of thousands or millions of people, the lead in these tampons combined with other factors could cause someone to get ill. But given the current evidence, it is staggeringly unlikely that there is any real risk to your health or well-being.
The problem with the stories that run with these kinds of studies is the gap between evidence and communication. This is the sort of extremely flimsy evidence that scientists … basically ignore. The researchers in question took samples from a few dozen tampons and extracted a range of metals from them. That’s not even enough of a sample size to make determinations about which brands are more problematic or to comment on how the metals got into the tampons. Importantly, there’s no data showing that the human body can absorb lead from tampons. And the presence of traces of toxins is not at all unique to period products. Other things, like green tea and dried fruit, have levels of heavy metals that are 10 to 100 times higher than that of these products.
Might this study perhaps spur further, much needed research? Honestly, there’s not a lot there to investigate—the amounts are genuinely so low that it’s questionable whether it’s worth doing more studies. Certainly, there are further studies that might better inform us about the potential risks of heavy-metal contamination in tampons.
The problem is, this sort of story gets told in the media all the time. As someone who fact-checks science communication, I feel as if I am constantly debunking tales of toxic household products. I wrote a similar piece just a few months ago, looking at the lead content in Lunchables. Here’s another one, from 2022, where I examined concerns about lead in dark chocolate. A third, from 2019, touched on worries about arsenic in baby food. And these are just the pieces that I wrote and can remember off the top of my head. There are so many of them that it’s hard to keep track.
The thing is, it’s unlikely that you will see a headline in the news suggesting that any product might slowly be killing you and find that it’s actually true. With the exception of recalls, when the government has to take quick action, most of these potential risks are about extremely broad population concerns. There are certainly still environmental issues out there, and the increasing prevalence of things like PFAS and microplastics in our bodies is worth keeping an eye on. (And in the cases of those substances, it is basically impossible to point to any one kind of food or personal-care product lurking in your pantry as the culprit; these are larger-scale problems.) Most of the stories that you read calling out individual products are more about sensationalism and less about solid science.
The next time someone tells you that your tampons have toxins in them, maybe take a breath and see if there are any other opinions to consider. Look for quotes in news stories from outside experts, who were not involved in the research, that put the findings into a broader context, as well as articles that help the reader understand how much of the scary toxic thing was actually present. Follow the story and see if regulatory bodies are urging consumers to take action by returning or avoiding the product in question; if they’re not, you can proceed as usual. Most stories of toxic household products sound terrifying, but the reality is often much more boring than you have heard.
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