Shin 2009 - heavy metals in sanitary napkins and tampons

Shin, Lee, and Chung measured chromium, cobalt, nickel, copper, cadmium, and lead in women’s sanitary napkins and tampons from five manufacturing countries. The study reports both total product content in ppm and extractable metal concentrations in artificial acidic sweat in ppb. The paper uses country/sample codes rather than brand-level reporting, so no brand names are attached to contamination values.

Key numbers

• Sample frame: the Materials section lists 13 sanitary napkins (Korea 3, Japan 2, United States 3, Germany 3, China 2) and 5 tampons (Korea 1, Japan 2, United States 2). The Conclusion says 23 feminine hygiene products, but Tables 1, 2, 4, and 5 enumerate 18 products.
• Sanitary napkin total content in Table 1, ppm: chromium was detected in all samples from 0.106 to 0.530; copper in all samples from 0.095 to 4.901; lead ranged from N.D to 0.308; nickel ranged from N.D to 0.890; cobalt ranged from N.D to 0.794; cadmium was detected only in C1 (0.020) and C2 (0.023).
• Sanitary napkin extractable metals in Table 2, ppb: chromium 0.532-29.286, cobalt N.D-1.319, nickel 2.939-14.738, copper 3.059-51.866, cadmium N.D-1.350, and lead N.D-5.022.
• Tampon total content in Table 4, ppm: chromium N.D-0.120, cobalt N.D-0.046, nickel 0.056-0.094, copper 0.288-3.509, cadmium N.D-0.032, and lead 0.083-0.872.
• Tampon extractable metals in Table 5, ppb: chromium 1.179-3.945, cobalt N.D-0.468, nickel 1.573-7.073, copper 2.639-9.337, cadmium N.D-0.174, and lead N.D-0.607.
• The authors state that extractable heavy-metal concentrations in sanitary products did not exceed the criteria of Oeko-Tex Standard 100 as presented in their Table 3.

Methods (brief)

For extractable-metal testing, 0.5 g of each product material was extracted in 10 ml artificial acidic sweat solution at 37oC for 24 hours on a magnetic stirrer; the final solution volume was made up to 10 ml. The artificial sweat solution contained 0.5g L-histidine monohydrochloride, 5.0g NaCl, and 2.2g disodium hydrogen orthophosphate, adjusted to pH 5.5 with 0.1M NaOH. Total-content testing used conventional hot-plate acid digestion. Metals were analyzed by ICP-MS (Elan 6100 DRC, Perkin Elmer), and values were expressed as means of three measurements.

Implications

Certification (HMTc): This source contributes early peer-reviewed occurrence evidence for menstrual pads and tampons, including both total-content and artificial-sweat-extractable metal measures. Because the extraction medium is artificial acidic sweat rather than menstrual fluid or simulated vaginal fluid, downstream pooling should keep the exposure basis distinct.

Courses: The paper is useful for contrasting total metal content with extractable content in the same product class.

App: The source supports menstrual-product contamination profiles for Cr, Co, Ni, Cu, Cd, and Pb while respecting the brand firewall by reporting only product-form/country/sample-code results.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• menstrual-pads
• menstrual-tampons

Verification notes

• PDF text was extracted with pdftotext -layout to /tmp/hmi_row_1545.txt; Tables 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 were re-read before writing.
• Identity checks before creation: exact title, raw handle MFK_gorhb4-2009-v33n6-853, raw SHA-256 e04c04b92afe14546d7d114e8b4671e91aa385270355bc1a2cb7f2c989ab83ac, and cite key shin2009-womens-sanitary-products-metals were searched in wiki/sources/ and evidence files; no existing source page was found.
• No DOI was found in the extracted text; doi: null and no_doi_assigned: true are used.
• Units are preserved: total content uses ppm; extractable metals use ppb. No conversion between units was made.
• Brand firewall: the paper mentions products as country/sample codes; no brand names are transcribed into the values.
• The sample count inconsistency (18 enumerated vs 23 in the Conclusion) is recorded in frontmatter and Key numbers.

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.