Though it’s no more an awkward moment for the urban Indian millennial to go and purchase a sanitary napkin, things are not the same in rural India. However, this is not what the debate-in-question is about. This debate is, in fact, questioning the very righteousness of these sanitary pads. If you know, sanitary pad manufacturing companies are not required by law to state its ingredients on the packet. This is because they are labelled as ‘medical products’ and hence, they are exempted from the ingredient-listing. Now, a thing that’s debatable in itself is the label of the product as a ‘medical product’. Many women and even men opine that pads are a necessity and their purpose is simply absorption. When half the population uses it every month, it is much more common than a ‘medical’ product and hence, it should definitely be disclosed what goes inside their making.
No research has been conducted to attest the quality standards of sanitary napkins that are sold in Indian markets. However, there have been individuals, organisations and NGOs who have pointed out the presence of harmful chemical products in sanitary napkins which are potentially harmful for women.
The official standards
If you think that your sanitary napkins are safe because they have been certified by official agencies, you will be aggrieved to know that your trust is misplaced. In India, these standards have not been updated since 1980. Experts believe that those standards are so outdated and hence lenient that all the pads, of the meagerest possible quality, will pass the standard. If you talk about the standards that were put in place by the Bureau of Indian Standards 1980, they are as basic as whether the absorbent fillers are smooth or lumpy and whether the pad surface is soft or rough. As a matter of fact, the toxicity of ingredients does not even make it to the list.
The contents of a sanitary napkin and its harmful effects
“The absorbent layer is the key component of the napkin and the extent to which this layer is able to absorb and retain the fluid determines the efficiency of the napkin. This bulk layer of a napkin is a non woven web, made of hydrophilic cellulosic staple fibers like wood pulp, cotton linters, viscose etc. Most of the wood pulp used for the purpose is imported, and therefore expensive, increasing the overall cost of a sanitary napkin. Cotton is seen as a major fiber poised to replace wood pulp especially in the feminine hygiene products where less bulky is preferred and thinner is better. The high cost of cotton is the reason why it has not been able to replace pulp,” read Chanana’s paper Design and Development of Low Cost Sanitary Napkins using Cotton Knitwear Waste, which was published in Health Positive, Journal of Best Practices in Clinical Medicine and Public Health, November 2009.
There are five layers in a sanitary pad:
The cover stock
Acquisition and distribution layer
Absorbent core
Back sheet
Siliconized paper
As the efficiency of a sanitary pad depends on its ability to absorb, the absorbent core uses superabsorbent polymers (SAPs).
They are either in the form of granules within cellulosic fibre matrix or can be a composite fabric layer. This core too has another two layers, one of which is permeable and one is not. They are made of spunlace fabric and polyethylene. However, the two most contested ingredients of the pad are dioxins and SAPs.
When one talks about these two, a paper published in 2016 by IIT Hyderabad pointed out, “Dioxins are used to bleach the cotton/material used for making absorbent core, and it is responsible for side effects in the body such as pelvic inflammatory disease, ovarian cancer, immune system damage, impaired fertility and diabetes. SAPs are added to increase the absorption capacity, but in 1980s, use of SAPs was restricted in tampons (in the US) due to its possible link with toxic shock syndrome, a potentially fatal illness caused by a bacterial toxin.” Now, because the vulvar and vaginal tissues are different from the rest of the body, they are also more at risk as they are more permeable. The walls of the vagina have mucous membranes and are filled with blood vessels and lymphatic vessels. This allows a direct transfer of chemicals from a sanitary pad into a woman’s circulatory system.
Pads or no pads?
Of course, there are many activists who argue that when only 42 per cent of the country’s women are using pads, some of which are makeshift, the rest are even worse. And there’s no denying this. Sanitary pads definitely offer a safer and more hygienic option to women who are still using cotton, cloth or mud for menstrual protection, and when they are more than half the country’s women, it is an important movement to provide them accessibility. However, what about those women who use sanitary napkins but are still not safe from infections? Just because they are better off than the other and bigger half does not mean they are safe. Every woman using a sanitary napkin, be they just 40 per cent of the total, has the right to know what goes in its making for it is estimated that a single woman uses anywhere between 11,000-17,000 sanitary napkins in her lifetime. Now, if that’s not reason enough, who can say what will be?