Call It Short & Sweet: Toxic Tampons

Call It what It Is with Jessica Kepshaw and Camil Leddington, an iHeartRadio podcast.

Hey call It crew, and welcome to an episode of Call It Short and Sweet. As someone who suffers from really bad health anxiety, I, along with so many people, read a headline that scared the out of me. To be honest and go ahead and read what just came out. Okay, So we have this headline that reads tampons contain lead, arsenic and other toxic metals. Study fines what we know and don't know about the findings that got us a

You talk chick fire.

Yes, we wanted to bring on real doctors that could talk to us about the findings so that we can get all more information for us and for our listeners.

Yeah, for the crew, because my guess is that people with periods would like to know what they're putting in their body and how it might affect your body. Today, we are very grateful that doctor Jenny Shearston is joining us as.

Well as doctor Jennifer Ashton.

We are so happy to have you with us. Doctor Sharston, thanks so much. It's nice to talk with you.

There's so much to say here. We thought a good starting off point, since you are so fluent in the material, would be for you to just say a bit about your findings and then maybe use that as a starting point.

We've investigated a variety of different tampons. We measured the concentrations of sixteen different metals in tampons from sixteen different brands, from fourteen different brands, excuse me, and we found concentrations of twelve of those sixteen medals in one hundred percent of the tampons we tested. And so one of those was lead, and I think that one was probably the most concerning that we found. But I would like to emphasize we've only found the presence of the metals inside

And that was one hundred percent of all or that was inorganic and organic tampons, correct. So I found that shocking because you really do sort of think that you're doing something good by finding the unbleached organic tampons and probably paying an up charge, and they actually still contain the metals.

Right, So we found differences by organic and non organic products. So for the organic tampons, they tended to have higher concentrations of arsenic. For the non organic products, those tended to have higher concentrations for blood. So we did see variation by organic versus non organic for metals. But I also will say that metals are one kind of class of chemicals, right. There are lots of other kinds of chemicals that could be present, including some of the ones

I think for listeners hearing this, my initial reaction is, how does something like this? Well, first, are you the first person to ever test tampons in this way?

So, yeah, this is the first study to ever test tampons for metals. So there are studies that have looked at other kinds of chemicals in tampons.

And then there are no regulations on tampons than having containing certain things like this. There's nothing in our government that protects us from this.

Tampons are regulated as a medical device by the Food and Drug Administration, but to my knowledge, there's not a requirement that they be tested for heavy metals.

For example, what made you interested in this was? What was the light bulb moment? Or was it was it just given to you as as a job? Was it an interest? How did you come to it?

For me, it's both personal and professional. It's personal because I have a period because I use tampons, and so I wanted to know for myself. But it's also professional and that we do a lot of research on metals in the environment. We know already that cotton, which is one of the major ingredients in a lot of tampons, kind of accumulate metals from the soil, and so this seemed like a natural question to ask.

So it's definitely frustrating to hear that your study found the materials that certainly don't sound good to be in your body. And even with that study it being published, there isn't an immediate next step for figuring out how it interfaces with your body and if it's harmful.

Or is there is there is there a next step that's happening immediately, absolutely, And what.

Is that for sure. So the next step is to determine if these metals can come out of the tampon in kind of a normal where type situation. And actually our lab that it's led by doctor Catherine Schilling at Columbia University, she's doing this work right now, so we've prioritized that research. We're working on answering that question, can these medals come out of the lab? So that's that's the next question, and absolutely.

We're already on it, knowing what you know and knowing that we're still waiting on more information. Do you feel like you've changed your tampon use?

I do still use tampons on occasion, because I think it's too soon again to say whether you shouldn't be using them. That's just not where we're at yet. But I'm certainly thinking about it. I'm certainly asking where those ingredients are coming from. I'd love to see more lee for example, what ingredients are being used in tampons? What are being.

Added now I'm wondering listening to this, well, what's in a pad, what's in the cup? Have those been tested yet or are there any plans to test those?

If they have not.

Been I would say The ones that I think should be prioritized are products that are used inside the vagina because they're in direct contact with the vagina. The vagina itself has a lot of blood vessels, it has a large surface area, so I think those should be prioritized.

This is amazing. I'm so happy to hear all this.

It's one step further into understanding things that I think we all just sort of.

Inherit.

You know, you just start using tampons, you start using this, you start using that.

I'm so glad that you're doing this work.

And I think that we also just need to really keep track of it all. And also I think we're going to need to do a little investigating as to how we can, as women or people who get periods, putting pressure on the forces in power that can further along the research and the funding and make sure that this is prioritized.

I have one last question before you go. You said that you tested fourteen different tampons. We don't have access to the brands or that you tested. Is that correct. We don't know what brands. The public do not know what brands were tested.

That's right.

We tested fourteen different brands, eighteen different product lines, and then I'm not able to disclose the specific brand that we tested. Okay, we were finding metals really in all of those and for twelve of these sixteen medals, we found them in one hundred percent of the tampons we tested. This might be a more systematic issue, kind of a brand specific issue, an issue with this by chain or manufacturing process for example.

Right right, yeah, all right, okay, all right, We're gonna keep tabs on this.

Yes, we would love to have you back on whenever more more results come out, and you know, hopefully sooner rather than later, so that we can all keep informed and make the decisions that we need to make for our bodies and for our health.

Absolutely, thank you, thank you so much.

Thank you, absolutely appreciate it.

Thanks for having me on course.

Hi ladies, how are you so well?

Thank you for being here.

I have to say I looked at your beautiful face on our little review sheets and then your name, and I was like.

Doctor Jennifer Aniston is coming. I looked quick.

I looked really quick.

I tabs.

Wait.

One time I was literally when I was a resident, I was paged overhead in the hospital in New York City. Doctor Jennifer Aniston's stat to the emergency room, and I ran down there and I was like, Okay, first of all, a scrubs. If I would hurt Aniston, I would be looking hell of a lot better than this.

Ah.

And by the way, I'm not new here, so get my nick. Yeah.

And then they got really confused because they were like, Rachel, what right.

So we really wanted to do an episode with you because obviously this came out, this information came out, and it sounds terrifying, right, the words arsenic. You know, there's a lot for our listeners to take in. Yes, it sounds really, really intense. So we want you. We were hoping that you could shed some light on what this steady kind of revealed for us and whether we should be all in panic mode, whether we should be wearing pads, what is the alternative?

What's in pads? Are we sounding the alarm? What's going on?

Let me take you through it. You heard about the study.

Yes, and basically it was I applaud the idea the concept behind this study. By the way, it was done at my alma mater, Columbia University, and they looked at fourteen diverse types of tampons, organic, non organic brand name, you know, kind of generics or internationally made, domestically made, you name it.

They kind of divided it all out.

They didn't name them, of course, but again they looked at a diverse, you know, kind of section, and they looked for sixteen heavy metals all right, which, by the way, are ubiquitous in our environment. They're all over the place. Yes, of course, they're produced when in the manufacturing process, in the industrial manufacturing process, either with water or soil or

Yeah, okay, And.

This study found every single heavy metal was present in all of the tampons tested. One of them had all sixteen present, sixteen types of heavy metals, including ones where there is no quote unquote safe amount of exposure like lead.

Right.

So this is obviously concerning because the average person who menstruates uses seventeen thousand tampons over their reproductive life span. Right, So you know, on one end, more research is obviously needed.

That's the bottom line.

And I know that's not really satisfying for women nor should it be really because it's like, Okay, you drop this bomb, now what are we going to actually do with it? I will tell you that the really important way to think about this in my medical opinion, and I always always say this. I say this on the air, I say this in my magazines, I say this on my social media platforms when I have a podcast soon and join you in the potto sphere congratulating.

Yes we can't wait, congratulations to the water's warm, come on in.

Thank you, thank you.

But you know, I'm always more concerned with teaching people how to think like a doctor than teaching them a fact that tomorrow we might learn is actually incorrect or erase that fact and we're going to replace it with a new one. And how to think like a doctor.

Now. That doesn't stop us from flying.

I was going to say, I did note that, and I try to forget it every time I bought it.

I did not know that. Thank you for reminding me.

I did not know that, actually, doctor Jennifer Aniston, all right, yes, yes, yes, are you even.

A real doctor?

Right?

Questioning everything about you now?

Right?

So that's an example, right, the sunlight known carcinogen, but we still go outside. You know, water can be deadly, but we still need water and we drink it. So the point is when you talk about anything that is potentially toxic, you have to ask, well, in what dose? Right, Like nuclear radiation is toxic with one dose, one exposure, it's very highly toxic, right, one dose, one frequency, one exposure can kill us. That's not the case with flying

Right.

So is it the case with something like heavy metals contained in a tampon that the majority of women are using seventeen thousand times across their lifetime?

So what do we need to do?

We need to say, a are these tampon vaginal root exposures being absorbed into our bloodstreams. So we need to have blood testing that has not been done. Right things, If I put a pill inside someone's vagina, that pill can be absorbed into their bloodstream. We do that all the time in gynecology, and so it's possible there's physiology to support that it can be absorbed, but we don't know

I will say, to try.

To calm all of us down. You take the number of women around the world who have used tampons seventeen thousand times each. It can't possibly be such a high level toxicity, or we would have hundreds of millions if not billions of women now over the last fifty years, with a lot of advert health outcomes. That's different than saying could it contribute? Of course it's possible to contribute. I don't think anyone would say, yeah, put some heavy

But we don't know whether the amounts and how much may be absorbed are actually doing harm. I mean, I would put this in kind of the same category, which I don't know if you guys have spoken about yet, but definitely you've heard of it. Are the microplastics that are everywhere, right, So for that microplastic exposure in our environment, show me the evidence that there is more harm done than not, and then show me the options for how

Everything you're saying makes perfect sense. And I my husband is also you know, deep in the science visil and he has for a long time, and of course all this information about what could be dangerous is really, on an emotional level, annoying, right, because it's asking us to reconsider how we use things. And most of the things that we've come to.

Use are because of ease or price or whatever.

These things are the creature comforts that we've sort of completely normalized. But here's my question with something like this, Yes, there will be this period of time where more studies will be done to understand what we already have, is there anyone considering or thinking about seems like an opportunity for some big company to create a tampon that they know does not contain any metals?

I mean, is that?

Isn't that sort of I mean again, like I said, I'm sure these systems are already set in place and it would disrupt greatly. But why wouldn't we be asking for not to wait and see eat if it causes damage? But really, just go at it, like I don't really I don't really want sixteen different metals.

In your camp into my vagina. Yeah, I just how about we just make one with that? It's not a possibility.

So first of all, it may not in fact be a possibility with the current manufacturing, you know, an industrial abilities or capabilities or lack thereof.

So that's the first thing.

I'm not an expert in industrial manufacturing, you know, from everything that I've read on this, it's like our again, the analogy is very comparable to our food supply, Like, is it possible to never have any contaminants in industrial mass produced food products?

It maybe not?

Actually, yeah, sad as that is right, not that it wouldn't be idea, but it might not be possible.

I do have a couple of questions, why is it that we can't Because you mentioned how one of the tampons has every single metal I tested for. Why can't we as a public no that is this product? Why has that kept a secret from us?

That's the multi billion dollar question.

I mean, and by the way, whether you're talking about a tampon or cosmetics or food or I mean, you name it, just keep going. We don't have We need to evolve dramatically and rapidly our transparency with what type of things are in our environment. And that includes products, consumer goods and products that we use and we're giving to our children and our pets and are in our environment. You know, that's incredibly important. I literally remember when the microplastics.

Quality is where I live.

But yeah, it's very easy to get overwhelmed and say like I'm caught between a rock and a hard place here because I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't.

And it's a big problem.

I feel that way a lot.

What should the public be doing in the immediate do we switch to pads? Is it better?

How can we keep ourselves safe?

What would you advise?

So I will say that I don't think that this one study should be enough to dramatically alter what a woman is doing right now, because there are too many missing pieces of information. This is very small. It's not even an observational study because no endpoint has been correlated with this right so it's literally just descriptive of tampons. We don't know if cotex pads. By the way, there's no reason to think that cotex pads have any less

So see the cup too, right, the cup goes inside you.

That just hasn't.

At the cup goes inside.

But I, as a board certified gynecologist, was never a huge proponent of the cup because there can be a lot of microlacerations or microscopic tears or cuts in the vaginal mucosa which could start its own host of issues that you know, none of us would want so, and we.

Mean from the using of the cup or from the insertion.

Either using it, anything that sits there, you know, because it's so hard, can cause kind of pressure, erosion and ulceration microscopic in the vaginal mucosa. And that hasn't been studied for that either. So until we have conclusive, conclusive, large reputable methodology studies that show that there is a negative consequence to these heavy metals in tampons, personally, I wouldn't tell my patients to change anything, And I wouldn't change anything because for every woman that might have had

My tamponsky, And so you.

As much as there might be a risk with tampons, you have to look at the healthy population who had no issues and then say is this causative? And we are so far away from that right now, as troubling as it is, we just don't. Don't there's no evidence that there is. You know that there's a reason to change anything right now?

Yeah, it's super it's super frustrating.

What is the lowest, lowest risk, Like, would it be the PFA free underwear.

That are like if you wanted to go that we don't.

Know any questions about this because yeah, I mean exactly what you said, you know, you don't know yet. It sounds scary as right, But okay, let's say we don't know yet and we have to wait for more information. Would our lowest risk option be the PFA free underwear?

Well, if again, there's a couple of things, So when you look at and I love the questions you guys are asking because it really again, it speaks to the way to think like a doctor. So the way that you think like a doctor when you're faced with these kind of discussions or decisions is you have to ask four questions. What's the risk of doing it, what's the risk of not doing it, what's the benefit of doing it or something, what's the benefit of not doing it?

Is better.

Is look For over fifteen years, I've been recommending organic tampons, not because I knew anything about heavy metals, because no one did before this study came out, but because I didn't like the idea of chlorine and bleach and fragrance and dyes being put on the cotton that are on the tampons I used right.

Like same, same, same same girl, same I did the same thing. And that's why I was actually very surprised to see that the metals were found in the organic tampons as well.

For somebody, I felt like that upgrade was saving me.

Right, but at least they don't have chlorine and bleach.

Yeah, yeah, die right, So you know, you could do something like that, or you could say, look, but they're more expensive.

They're more expensive.

And also remember what I said about the principal in pharmacology of a top right, you need dose, you need frequency, you need a high potency toxin. So maybe you say, Okay, I'm going to try to go for frequency. I'm going to try to lower my frequency. Instead of using seventeen thousand tampons over my lifetime, maybe I'm going to try to cut that in half. Or maybe I'm not going to use a tampon on the last two days of my period. I'm only going to use on the first

That's something that we can all.

I like the way you think so much, so our tampons are not trying to kill us there.

Well, we don't know your world is.

I mean, it's going to take some time, but I do think that before you go, we have to say that because you are so incredible.

This is what you're doing.

You have a free science backed newsletter that people can find right at join agenda dot com.

I want to hear you talk about everything.

And thank you. I'm I hopefully you do talk about everything on there so that people listening who have more questions and as we find out more information, they can go there and get it. And will you please come back on will you please make your super tampon? Thank you, We will buy it, we will invest.

Yeah, we're gonna do.

Like an a d JA and people will think it's asked doctor Jennifer Aniston, but it will be to ask.

Yes.

Yes.

First of all, thank you for your invitation. I would love to thank you for mentioning it's agenda like j E n.

Yes, yes, yes, agen uh, I'm picking up with your button down.

Join agenda dot com and I launched it just four months ago. It's free every week and it's the areas in a women's women's lives that I happen to be board certified in, so obesity, medicine, nutrition and OBGYN. And it's been really fun and people are loving it, so thank you, and I hope you guys enjoy it. I love it.

You know, I live with someone who knows so much and he sort of has always been on the forefront of bringing home the information. I always say again because like I said, changing your lifestyle is annoying, and yet obviously I'm not going to say no when the science is there.

So it's a very delicate balance.

It's the push pull and what I've found in the past, you know, decades, as so much has changed, is it really really helps to have someone give you their attention and their expertise and talk about how to rationally sift through the information. Because again, we live in a very you know, headline driven culture where it's like it comes out and you're like boom, and it's very easy to get super under all of it and think in a

And like I said it, like the way you say it.

After listening, I'm still a little you know, obviously, I'm uneasy. I'm not ready to throw my tampons in the fire just yet. I am ready to buy super tampons.

I know that was fascinating. I want I want to know more about that.

I did really love the approach of finding a way of thinking about it that works for you, that feels like a critical thinker, like really looking at the information. And I really loved uh doctor Ashton's idea of maybe you're minimizing your use right like in this period of not really knowing what those metals inside those tampons are doing inside of our body, because that's the part they

Yeah, and waiting for the research to come out, which hopefully comes out sooner rather than later, let's be honest.

Yeah, and also I think, I mean, let's senk for the Call It crew. We're doing it right now, for sure. But the more that you are having these conversations outside of this podcast, the more you're talking to your friends and your loved ones. And that's not just you know, people with periods, that's everyone about how important women's health is and prioritizing it and making sure that it's funded, and making sure that you're asking the right questions and

And I will be going to join Agenda dot com for information and of course, guys, ask your obi if you have questions about these things, I will ask and go Sero B and go serio. All right, let's call it short and sweet, Short and sweet.

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