• U.S. women landfill or incinerate 11.3 billion "disposable" menstrual products per year.
  
  
• It takes approximately 500 years for one "disposable" menstrual pad to partially biodegrade.
  
  
• "Disposable" menstrual product manufacturers are not required to list their ingredients.
  Nail polish and shampoo manufacturers are.
  
  
• Slim "maxi" paper products are impregnated with synthetic gelling crystals to increase absorbency. Their safety has been hotly debated in baby diapers but overlooked in "disposable" menstrual products.
  
  
• Women are absent in upper management of Fortune 500 companies that manufacture "disposable" menstrual products.
  
  
• An individual woman throws away about ten thousand paper pads or tampons in her lifetime.
  
  
• The primary target markets of Fortune 500 companies are adolescent girls and underdeveloped countries like Eastern Europe, Soviet Union and the Pacific Rim.
  
  
• In the U.S., menstrual pads are considered "medical devices".
  
  

• "Disposable" menstrual products are not sterilized.
  
  
• Chlorine bleaching of paper pulp results in 400-700 million pounds of toxins being dumped into U.S. waterways.
  
  
• Dioxins, the side-effect of chlorine bleaching, are suspected carcinogens and resistant to biological breakdown.
  
  
• Dioxins have been documented to impair liver function and depress human immune systems.
  
  
• The ozone is thinned by the CFC's that are produced in the manufacturing processes that utilize chlorine - plastics, paints, dyes, bleaching agents, cleaning solvents, aerosols, deodorants, refrigerants, and wood preservatives.
  
  
• Chlorine was the noxious substance used to suffocate soldiers during the First World War.
  
  
• French nurses experimented with the first "disposable" menstrual products from cellulose surgical gauze during the First World War.
  
  
• Trout store dioxins up to 86,000 times more than the water they find themselves in.
  We eat these fish!
  
  
• Humans are harbouring increasing levels of dioxin in their fatty tissues and breast milk.
  (Ed. notes: Formula also has high dioxin levels, so this is not a reason not to breastfeed)
  
  
• An estimated two million seabirds and one hundred thousand marine mammals die annually from swallowing plastics including tampon applicators.
  
  
• Call the 1-800 number on "disposable" menstrual products and all white paper products and insist on products that have not been bleached at any stage of production with any chlorine.
  
  
• BUY CLOTH AND/OR SEA-SILK SPONGES AND REUSE!

sources: Whitewash, Greenpeace