Marcelis et al. 2025 — Menstrual and intimate care product leachables

Marcelis et al. developed an extractables-and-leachables workflow for 64 menstrual and intimate care products (MICPs), including tampons, menstrual pads, menstrual cups, adult novelties, Kegel-exercise devices, and menstrual sea sponges. The paper reports organic leachables and a pilot ICP-MS/MS metal/metalloid leaching table under simulated-use conditions. Metal values are reported in the leachate in ppb; arsenic, chromium, tin, and mercury are total-element measurements, not speciated forms.

Key numbers

The full product set was 64 MICPs: tampons (n = 9), menstrual pads (n = 6), adult novelties (n = 15), menstrual cups (n = 15), Kegel-exercise devices (n = 14), and menstrual sea sponges (n = 5). The metal/metalloid pilot used five samples from each product category; tampons and menstrual pads were not carried into the Table 6 metal-leaching quantification because preliminary experiments showed no significant leaching of metal concentrations.

Table 6 reports inorganic chemicals leaching from menstrual and intimate care products, expressed in ppb. Category-level maxima from the table were:

For menstrual sea sponges, the table also reports maximum leachable Li 2.6 ppb, Mn 117.2 ppb, Fe 4930 ppb, Co 28 ppb, Cu 22.4 ppb, Zn 95.9 ppb, Se 7.1 ppb, and Ba 9.8 ppb. The narrative highlights one sea sponge with Al 1661.8 ppb, Fe 4930 ppb, and Ni 1850.2 ppb, and states that natural-product origin and marine-pollutant exposure likely contributed to the variability.

For adult novelties, Table 6 shows maximum leachable Li 15.1 ppb, Mn 1.1 ppb, Cu 1.9 ppb, Zn 122.7 ppb, tAs 0.1 ppb, Cd 0.8 ppb, Ba 3.2 ppb, Pb 17.7 ppb, and Sn 2159.1 ppb, with the other listed metals below the lower limit of quantification. For menstrual cups, the table shows measurable Pb in multiple samples, reaching 32.9 ppb, and Sn reaching 238.6 ppb. For Kegel-exercise devices, leachable metals were mostly below quantification, with Al up to 504.7 ppb, Cr up to 1 ppb, Ba up to 2.4 ppb, Pb up to 1.5 ppb, and Sn up to 0.4 ppb.

The abstract states that menstrual sea sponges had the highest levels of metal/metalloid leaching, listing Nickel, Cadmium, Antimony, and Mercury values of 1850, 1.0, 0.3, and 0.6 “ppm.” The body Table 6 title states that inorganic leachables are expressed in ppb; this page uses the Table 6 ppb basis and records the abstract/body unit inconsistency for audit.

Table 5 reports 19 organic leachables under in-use conditions, while 36 of the 55 extractable chemicals were not detected in the leachables assessment. Organic maximums included heliotropine 28.22 µg/g, di-n-octyl phthalate 100 ppb, triethyl citrate 18 ppm, and 2-ethyl-1-hexanol 0.24 ppm; these are organic-chemical context, not metal occurrence values.

Methods (brief)

The study aligned with ISO 10993 extractables/leachables concepts. Exaggerated extractables testing used 24 h extraction at 37 °C with headspace GC-MS, GC-MS, LC-MS, and ICP-MS to identify potential constituents. Simulated-use leachables testing used vaginal- and menstrual-fluid simulants at 37 °C: 1 h for adult novelties and Kegel-exercise devices, and 4 h and 8 h for menstrual products such as tampons, menstrual pads, and menstrual cups. The inorganic leachables table used ICP-MS/MS with external calibration in matrix-matched standards; NIST SRM 1568b was used as a certified reference material. The Table 6 As (O2) label denotes the ICP-MS/MS oxygen mode used for arsenic measurement, not an arsenic species.

Implications

Certification: This is direct leachables evidence for menstrual cups and other intimate products, plus null/low-leachability context for absorbent menstrual products in the metal pilot. Values are simulator-fluid leachate concentrations in ppb, not product-as-sold concentrations and not acid-digestion total-content values.

Courses: The source is useful for contrasting total-content studies with leachables studies. It also shows why extraction conditions, fluid simulants, and contact time must be preserved before comparing product evidence.

App: The source supports evidence cards for menstrual cups and other menstrual/intimate products, especially for leachable Pb, Sn, Al, Ni, tAs, Cd, Sb, and tHg. Product names and brands should remain suppressed; the usable signal is by product category and sample code.

Microbiome: Not applicable.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• menstrual-tampons
• menstrual-pads
• menstrual-cups
• menstrual-intimate-products-other
• aluminum
• chromium
• nickel
• arsenic-total
• cadmium
• antimony
• lead
• tin
• mercury-total

Verification notes

Identity checks before drafting found no existing wiki/sources/ hit for DOI 10.1016/j.envint.2025.109401, raw handle MFK_1-s2-0-s0160412025001527-main, cite key marcelis2025-micp-leachables-metals, or the exact title. The DOI, authors, title, journal, year, and CC BY-NC-ND license were checked against the first page and PDF metadata. Table 6 was re-opened from /tmp/hmi-fem-002.txt; all metal values on this page are copied as ppb leachate values without conversion. The abstract/body unit conflict for the sea-sponge Ni/Cd/Sb/Hg values was preserved instead of normalized. No inorganic arsenic, Cr(VI), methylmercury, organotin, or other speciation is reported; frontmatter uses tAs, Cr, Sn, and tHg. The source uses product sample codes and discusses popular brands, but this page reports only product-category and sample-code summaries under the brand firewall. Product slugs were checked against the closed taxonomy snapshot; menstrual-intimate-products-other is used for adult novelties, Kegel-exercise devices, and menstrual sea sponges because no narrower closed product slug exists. npm run evidence:source-routes exited 0 and generated four product rows; routing_malformed.csv contains an advisory-only missing-ingredients warning because the closed ingredient vocabulary has no valid material slug for this consumer-product leachables study, so ingredients: [] is intentionally retained.

Page history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page. The full version history lives in git; when DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.