The FDA Needs to Bloody Well Get Its Act Together

by Sheila Velazquez / July 15th, 2024

While we flit from story to story, post to post, that warn us of the dangers of the day, much of it exaggerated or imagined, the actual harm that is being done to us continues to escalate. And very few in the media are covering it. So much time is spent hashing over politics and “injustice,” but so little to our health, safety, and financial security. Corporate media does not give a crap about us, and we all know it.

Little attention is paid to women’s health, except when the rhetoric serves someone’s purpose, usually political or financial. The results of a study of tampons, the first such study ever undertaken, were recently released. Kind of strange, since they’ve studied just about everything else we put into our bodies and tortured and killed millions of test animals in the process, but no one thought to check to see if contaminated tampons might harm the women who use them or the babies born to them. Apparently, they didn’t want to touch those nasty old menstrual products from which they earn up to 70% in gross profit margin on the yearly sales in the US alone of $2 billion.

The study was performed by a team from UC Berkeley, Columbia University, and Michigan State University. They tested products available in New York City, London, and Athens.

Pesticide use has jumped dramatically since around the time biologist and environmental pioneer Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962. We are bombarded with chemically soaked foods and fibers. Among the crops harboring the most concentrated amounts of herbicides and pesticides is cotton, the main component of tampons. The tissue of the vagina is delicate and more easily absorbs chemicals than the skin on other parts of the body, thereby increasing the danger.

The study found that there is no difference in the amounts of metals between organic and non-organic tampons. Fourteen brands and 18 products lines were tested, from both top sellers and store brands, and measurable traces of 16 toxic metals, including lead and arsenic were found, in every … single … one.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) classifies tampons as medical devices. Surely, they must do extensive testing, I thought. But no. As with so many other consumer products, they rely on the manufacturers, who have nothing but our health and safety at heart.

From the FDA website: “As part of the FDA’s review, manufacturers submit data including the results of testing to evaluate the safety of the materials used to make tampons and applicators (if present); tampon absorbency, strength, and integrity, and whether tampons enhance the growth of certain harmful bacteria or change normal bacteria levels in the vagina.” That’s like trusting a stranger to watch your kid.

Else Proulx wrote for Berkeley Public Health, “Metals have been found to increase the risk of dementia, infertility, diabetes, and cancer. They can damage the liver, kidneys, and brain, as well as the cardiovascular, nervous, and endocrine systems. In addition, metals can harm maternal health and fetal development.”

Women experience their periods for seven years of their lives on average. In addition, there is a mental cost for women who can’t afford these products, and there are approximately 500 million of them worldwide who experience “period poverty.” In some cultures women fashion their own menstrual pads and tampons. When I was young, I had an immigrant friend who taught me how to make pads from rags, and while that practice was normal in her country, most girls in the US used manufactured products when they had their monthly “curse.”

The European Union has much stricter standards than does our FDA. For example, they have banned ingredients in many personal care products that the FDA does not even regulate. Time to clean house and insist that the people we pay to watch out for us, actually do.

As I alluded to above, the government that extracts billions of taxpayers dollars relies on corporate oversight when deciding what is or isn’t good for us. If that’s the best these agencies have to offer, they should be abolished and actual scientists and scholars put in their place. Our bloated and ineffective federal oversight system is out of control, and this is just one example of how far away from their purpose they have strayed. We should be justifiably outraged.

Sheila Velazquez lives and writes in Northwest Massachusetts. Her work is informed by decades of experience with unions, agriculture, public health, politics and her support of populism. She welcomes contact by email: simplelifestyle101@yahoo.com. Read other articles by Sheila.