The FDA has effectively told anyone with a vagina not to worry about the arsenic, lead, cadmium, and other toxic metals found in tampons. According to a new FDA study, keep putting all those toxic metals right up where you make babies. The agency says the amounts released during normal use are so low they don’t present a meaningful health risk.
The findings, published by the FDA, were a response to a 2024 study that found heavy metals in popular tampon brands, raising some troubling questions about whether a product designed to be inserted into the body and left there for hours at a time had ever been adequately examined for toxic contaminants.
The FDA tested 11 tampon products across six brands and concluded that, while they definitely contained metals, the exposure levels were well below safety thresholds. Maybe that is true, but there is still something unnerving about inserting something in your body that contains a bouquet of stuff that has been known to kill and cause birth defects and hormone disruptions, just to name a few of the consequences of prolonged exposure.
Everything We Know About the FDA Study on Toxic Metals in Tampons
Researchers found 19 different metals total, including some with spooky names like arsenic (which Wikipedia describes as “notoriously toxic”), lead (a theory gaining steam in recent years is that lead spewed out by under-regulated factories led to the creation of several serial killers), and cadmium (which once got Miley Cyrus-branded jewelry removed from Walmart shelves).
15 of those metals appeared in more than 90 percent of the products tested. The highest concentrations were calcium, zinc, arsenic, and cadmium, but the FDA says even those amounts were still within accepted safety margins.
The FDA went on to explain that these metals aren’t there because of negligence or contamination at the factory. Many of them occur naturally in the environment and can enter cotton through soil, water, and fertilizers. Some of the metals can also make their way in there through the manufacturing process, or they may be intentionally added as pigments that change the tampons’ color.
Rayon-based tampons were found to contain higher levels of barium, lithium, and zinc, and cotton-based tampons had higher concentrations of calcium, iron, strontium, and vanadium.
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