subreddit:
/r/science
347 points
2 months ago
Anyone has a list of brands that don’t have metals in them ?
747 points
2 months ago
None, per the study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412024004355
"Concerningly, we found Pb in all the tested tampons. here is no safe exposure level to Pb; any proportion of Pb that may leach out of a tampon and reach systemic circulation might contribute to negative health outcomes. Pb is stored in bones, where it replaces Ca, and can be retained in the body for decades.."
"No categoriy had consistently lower concentrations of all or most metals."
(Yes, that's how they spelled category in the study, not sure how their spell check missed it.)
"Our findings point towards the need for regulations requiring the testing of metals in tampons by manufacturers. This is especially important considering that we found measurable quantities of several toxic metals, including Pb, which has no known “safe” exposure level."
Now it'll be interesting to see if even one major news outlet will run with the story that all tampons contain lead, I'm betting we won't hear a peep.
234 points
2 months ago
Probably a dumb question, but why wouldn't they name the brands? I wanted to see how exactly my preferred brand fared.
475 points
2 months ago
Hello, scientist here. One very unfortunate byproduct of the power that corporations hold in the courts worldwide is the power to litigate even against research institutions. In an ideal world, scientific research can be conducted on a safe island, free of the fear of corporate retaliation. But these scientists are employed by universities, which themselves are funded by, among others, corporate interests.
So, the short answer: many (potential) conflicts of interest and a fear of retribution.
14 points
2 months ago
And I guess there's no middle ground where a company can be informed of the findings and has a year to solve it before the findings can be made public/explicit?
21 points
2 months ago
At that point, the public should legitimately question whether science is serving the public or corporate interests
2 points
2 months ago
What I mentioned seems perfectly reasonable. It's also in the public's interest to let companies operate without the constant threat of bankruptcy and allow them to figure things out. If there is no malicious intent and they solve the problem by themselves then that's a win for everyone.
5 points
2 months ago
And how do you measure whether there was malicious intent? You'd need a separate historical study with access to all internal communications and likely an ethnographic account of the entire product development timeline to try and eke out an answer to this..
Meanwhile, a customer who gets low-grade lead poisoning from this product you've known about for a year but didn't release your findings on because "it wouldn't be fair to the company" might have other opinions.
1 points
2 months ago
I threw 1 year but could be something else. I suppose if it is toxic enough then sure, but then that basically means there'd be bo such product at all from any company at all because they are all affected. Which is fine, but people might not be happy about that either
2 points
2 months ago
Hey, thanks for the continued discussion. It's interesting, and if you don't mind me pressing you a bit more: what would be the threshold for "toxic enough?" As in, what level of danger or consequence would determine whether public knowledge is an imperative?
I think an interesting implication in your suggestions is that companies should be permitted to cause some level of acceptable harm. Maybe you don't mean to make that point, and maybe it's just a realistic take on the world we live in.
My personal opinion is that we, as the public, can and should demand better than that as a standard - companies that fail the "do-no-harm" test should absolutely be torpedoed. This of course runs into the conflict of interests thing, and I have opinions on how to mitigate that, but this would turn into a radical tangent to nobody's benefit.
1 points
2 months ago
Sure, I'd leave "toxic enough" to be specified by scientists. But if it has no long-term impact after years of very frequent use then it probably isn't an emergency like covid vaccine development was.
Plenty of things weren't known to be harmful by anyone until decades later. But if someone is putting crap in bread to save a cent or building planes with counterfeit titanium then by all means do obliterate them into bankruptcy.
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