By Natracare
Toxic Shock Syndrome was back in the headlines recently following an investigation on US television about the tampon related death of Amy Elifritz.
In response women around the world have been asking what is in their tampon and are there any potential health risks?
Natracare raised the issue of fibre loss in conventional tampons at least 15 years ago. The reaction from those conventional brands was that the body naturally dispels the fibres. We asked nurses doing smear tests and they said that they can always tell who uses tampons because they have to remove old tampon fibres before achieving a clear smear for sampling. Conventional tampons mostly use rayon to make their tampons. Rayon is a straight, smooth fibre made from wood pulp. These smooth fibres have little integrity so they slide apart more easily when wet. Eventually, these same manufacturers who claimed fibre loss was not an issue, decided to put a polypropylene (that’s plastic to you and me) non-woven wrapper around the rayon core to reduce the loss of fibres.
Natracare is made only from 100% certifed organic long fibre cotton. Cotton is a curly structured fibre and interlocks with other fibres when wet; therefore Natracare tampons tend not to shed fibres.
If you want to avoid fibre loss, synthetic fibres and chemicals and use a product developed to counter the impudence of the mass brands, then Natracare certified organic 100% cotton tampons were developed by me 21 years ago to release women from this onslaught of toxic, synthetic rubbish we felt coerced to buy each month.
If you want to use reusables, great, but avoid sponges. They are as likely to cause TSS as rayon tampons according to independent research conducted by Tierno and Hanna of New York University Medical School in the mid 90’s. The results of that peer reviewed research indicated that along with the menstrual cup, Natracare all cotton tampons did not generate the toxins associated with Toxic Shock Syndrome.
There is a video of the fibre loss issue on our Youtube page.
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