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- 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
This article provided compliments of Born to Love
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