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Speaker 1: You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast. Mamma Mia acknowledges

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Speaker 1: the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast

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Speaker 1: is recorded on.

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Speaker 2: Hi.

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Speaker 1: I'm Claire Murphy. This is Mumma MIA's daily news podcast,

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Speaker 1: The Quikie. A recent study has found that there are

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Speaker 1: heavy metals and potentially toxic chemicals in tampons. But before

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Speaker 1: you freak out about whether yours has these things, we

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Speaker 1: found out there's a lot more you need to know

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Speaker 1: beyond that very scary headline. So before we delve into

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Speaker 1: what's in our tampons, let's get the latest from the

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Speaker 1: Quokie newsroom. Monday July twenty two, after a disastrous debate,

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Speaker 1: much speculation about his cognitive health and calls from inside

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Speaker 1: his own party, including from former President Barack Obama, to

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Speaker 1: step away, President Joe Biden has officially dropped out of

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Speaker 1: the twenty twenty four presidential election race. Biden wrote a letter,

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Speaker 1: which was posted to social media overnight, saying, it has

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Speaker 1: been my greatest honor of my life to serve as

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Speaker 1: your president, and while it has been my intention to

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Speaker 1: seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest

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Speaker 1: of my party and the country for me to stand

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Speaker 1: down and focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president

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Speaker 1: for the remainder of my term. Thirty minutes after that

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Speaker 1: letter was posted, he wrote another post, saying, today I

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Speaker 1: want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamla

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Speaker 1: Harris to be the nominee of our party this year, Democrats.

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Speaker 1: He wrote, It's time to come together. The decision will

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Speaker 1: mark the end of Biden's fifty two year political career. Harris,

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Speaker 1: who is twenty years younger than both Joe Biden and

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Speaker 1: Donald Trump, appears to be the natural successor, if for

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Speaker 1: no other reason than that she's the only one permitted

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Speaker 1: to access the money that has already been collected to

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Speaker 1: push for Biden's reelection under federal campaign finance rules. Others

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Speaker 1: would be coming from a standing start behind Harris. The

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Speaker 1: possibilities for the Democratic presidential candidate could also come from

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Speaker 1: California through Governor Gavin Newsom, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Kentucky

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Speaker 1: Governor Andy Bisher, or Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker, who've

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Speaker 1: all already been floated as possibilities. The delegates who voted

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Speaker 1: for Biden nearly four thousand of them across the already

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Speaker 1: held primaries will now be free to vote for whoever

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Speaker 1: steps into Biden's place. Those delegates would normally vote for

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Speaker 1: their party's official presidential nominee at the Democratic National Party Convention,

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Speaker 1: which is set to take place to August nineteen to

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Speaker 1: twenty two. In order to secure the nomination, the candidate

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Speaker 1: will need to get a majority of votes from the

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Speaker 1: four thousand, six hundred and seventy two delegates. If no

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Speaker 1: one gets that majority, there'll be a broken convention, which

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Speaker 1: could then take several rounds of voting for someone to

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Speaker 1: secure that majority. The Democrats now have a concerningly short

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Speaker 1: period of time to persuade voters to back another candidate

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Speaker 1: in this election. They'll need to convince voters that whoever

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Speaker 1: ends up being endorsed by the party can actually beat

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Speaker 1: Donald Trump. Mister Trump posted to social media an hour

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Speaker 1: after Biden's statement was released, saying Crooked Joe Biden was

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Speaker 1: not fit to run for president and is certainly not

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Speaker 1: fit to serve and never was. He writes that Biden

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Speaker 1: only attained the position of president by li's fake news

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Speaker 1: and not leaving his basement, and that all those around him,

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Speaker 1: including his doctor and the media knew that he wasn't

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Speaker 1: capable of being president. He finished the post with we

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Speaker 1: will suffer greatly because of his presidency, but we will

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Speaker 1: remedy the damage he has done very quickly, ending with

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Speaker 1: make America great Again. Police investigating the death of a

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Speaker 1: man and one of his two year old twins at

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Speaker 1: a Sydney train station yesterday say a gust of wind

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Speaker 1: may have pushed the pram onto the tracks. Investigators say

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Speaker 1: the parents of the twin two year olds took their

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Speaker 1: hands off the pram for a very very short period

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Speaker 1: of time as they exited a lift onto the platform,

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Speaker 1: Superintendent Paul Dunstan saying whether it was a gust of wind,

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Speaker 1: they're not quite sure, but it appears that the pram

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Speaker 1: has instantly started to roll in the direction of the

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Speaker 1: train lines, and that the father had gone into parent

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Speaker 1: mode and tried to save his two young daughters that

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Speaker 1: have fallen onto the tracks, and in doing so so

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Speaker 1: it cost him his life. The train that came through

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Speaker 1: at that moment was not due to stop at the station,

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Speaker 1: but it had slowed as it passed. Sydney Trains saying

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Speaker 1: the drivers are now being assisted to deal with the tragedy.

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Speaker 1: The tween who survived the fall and contact with the

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Speaker 1: train is uninjured. Their mother is in a state of

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Speaker 1: shock and is being supported by her community. Companies impacted

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Speaker 1: by the crowd strike update crash on Friday may expect

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Speaker 1: some issues to take weeks to resolve. The outage left

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Speaker 1: industries including banks, airlines, supermarkets, media organizations and retailers unable

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Speaker 1: to operate as a line of corrupted code forced Windows

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Speaker 1: based computers to revert to the blue screen of death.

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Speaker 1: Some electronic signs in shopping centers still display the blue screen.

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Speaker 1: This morning, Home Affairs Minister Clara O'Neil said it would

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Speaker 1: be some time before all systems were operational, that in

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Speaker 1: some cases it may be weeks, but there was no

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Speaker 1: critical impact to infrastructure or government services. Microsoft estimated that

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Speaker 1: eight point five million individual devices were hit by the

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Speaker 1: up date induced stoutage. A legal notice published in The

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Speaker 1: La Times has informed of the decision by Angelina Jolie

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Speaker 1: and Brad Pitt's daughter Shiloh to change her name, dropping

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Speaker 1: the pit, but her lawyer says the reporting around it

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Speaker 1: has been misleading. She filed for the name change on

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Speaker 1: her eighteenth birthday, on May twenty seven, Shiloh's attorney saying

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Speaker 1: the media should be more careful in their reporting, especially

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Speaker 1: when covering a young adult who's made an independent and

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Speaker 1: significant decision following painful events and is merely following legal process.

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Speaker 1: He explained that Shiloh Jolie did not take out an

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Speaker 1: ad announcing the name change, but as her attorney, he's

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Speaker 1: required by law to publish a legal notice In California.

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Speaker 1: Experts say that brad Pitt could go to court and

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Speaker 1: challenge her decision, but now that she's eighteen and no

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Speaker 1: longer a minor, she can call herself whatever she wants.

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Speaker 1: That's what's happening in the world today. Next, what do

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Speaker 1: we do when we're told there's lead, arsenic and possibly

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Speaker 1: other awful toxic things in our tampons? We find out

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Speaker 1: exactly what that means and whether these pose a risk

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Speaker 1: to us at all. Tampons have come a long way

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Speaker 1: since the first commercially available version that hit shelves in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties. Back then, the Tampax brand, a mashup

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Speaker 1: of the words tampon and vaginal packs, was a game

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Speaker 1: changer for millennia. Before then, women had been seeking a

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Speaker 1: solution to plugging their menstrual flow rather than allowing it

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Speaker 1: to exit and stain whatever was being used to contain

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Speaker 1: it regularly unsuccessfully. It's believed women in ancient Rome used wool,

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Speaker 1: Indonesian women vegetable fibers. Grass has been utilized in some

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Speaker 1: countries in Africa, and in Hawaii there are towers of

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Speaker 1: women using native ferns, and prior to the tampon's arrival,

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Speaker 1: many women used rolled up sponges. Men of medicine have

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Speaker 1: come up with devices over the decades to insert into

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Speaker 1: women which were absorbent, but they were rarely discussed as

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Speaker 1: being something that could be utilized to help with a

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Speaker 1: menstrual cycle, more as a vessel to administer medication or

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Speaker 1: to help post operatively. The management of a woman's menstrual

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Speaker 1: cycle considered her burden to deal with.

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Speaker 3: She's a woman, isn't she?

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Speaker 1: But despite fears from some, let's face it mostly men

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Speaker 1: about women having to touch themselves down there to insert

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Speaker 1: one that some may even find it pleasurable, or that

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Speaker 1: it could accidentally relieve her of her much coveted virginity.

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Speaker 1: Tampon use has grown considerably since then. Sales increased five

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Speaker 1: times in less than a decade. Some earlier versions used

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Speaker 1: products in their manufacture that made the user more susceptible

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Speaker 1: to toxic shock syndrome, especially if the tampon had been

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Speaker 1: left in for more than the recommended time, But modern

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Speaker 1: tampons are much safer and the condition has become rare.

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Speaker 1: But while we understand what brands we prefer, and that

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Speaker 1: they come in a variety of sizes for the volume

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Speaker 1: of our flow and with some different variations, including some

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Speaker 1: that have wings and applicators, do we really know what

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Speaker 1: exactly is in our tampons? Aside from that it's mostly

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Speaker 1: made of cotton, what goes into their production that will

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Speaker 1: eventually end up inside us can be a bit of

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Speaker 1: a mystery. So when researchers released data from a recent study,

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Speaker 1: one they claimed was a first of its kind, showed

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Speaker 1: that tampons they study contained things like arsenic, cadmium, lead,

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Speaker 1: and thirteen other metals, we were shocked. They'd tested thirty

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Speaker 1: name and store brand tampons sold across the EU, the US,

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Speaker 1: and the UK. They included those made from both organic

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Speaker 1: and non organic cotton, both of which return results containing

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Speaker 1: these heavy metals. They measured the levels in parts per billion,

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Speaker 1: finding that in some the lead levels were twenty four

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Speaker 1: times higher than the limit for bottled water. But does

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Speaker 1: that mean that Australian women, who by an estimated three

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Speaker 1: hundred million tampons a year, should be worried.

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Speaker 4: It's definitely in the back of my mind, I guess now,

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Speaker 4: and I think I probably changed them quicker. I guess overall, yes,

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Speaker 4: I think it does affect me.

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Speaker 3: So a few years ago I realized I was getting

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Speaker 3: really irritated down there from tampons, and I switched to

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Speaker 3: like a natural organic brand, which felt really wankery at

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Speaker 3: the time, but actually it was the only thing that

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Speaker 3: didn't make me react. And so I've been using very

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Speaker 3: like who Wi organic tampons since then. And I know,

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Speaker 3: I feel like, out of sixth sense that this was coming.

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Speaker 3: I won't be using those tampons ever.

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Speaker 4: Again, I don't actually use tampons because I've got a marina,

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Speaker 4: But you know what, I feel like, we put so

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Speaker 4: many toxins in our body, like we put them in

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Speaker 4: our mouth. What's wrong with putting in the other hole? Really,

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Speaker 4: at the end of the day, it's all the same.

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Speaker 1: Well, let's find out doctor Andrea Love is an immunologist

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Speaker 1: and microbiologist. Andrea, the headlines we've read about the toxic

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Speaker 1: chemicals in tampons of late tell us things like they

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Speaker 1: contain alarming levels of toxic metals? Is that true? Do

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Speaker 1: we need to be alarmed?

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Speaker 5: You do not need to be alarmed by this? I

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Speaker 5: think it really comes down to, you know, the drive

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Speaker 5: to create attention with headlines, right, and this is kind

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Speaker 5: of the perfect storm because we're talking about a semi

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Speaker 5: stigmatized subject. We're talking about menstruation, we're talking about feminine products,

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Speaker 5: we're talking about tampons, and we're talking about chemicals that

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Speaker 5: have very negative connotations, and so it really is the

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Speaker 5: perfect storm and it's just ripe for clickbait ultimately.

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Speaker 2: But you know, the big.

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Speaker 5: Spoiler is that this study didn't demonstrate that there were

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Speaker 5: alarming levels of any of the substances assessed in tampons,

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Speaker 5: and you know, it didn't demonstrate that they were posing

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Speaker 5: any potential risk to people. But you know, that wouldn't

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Speaker 5: have been attention getting that wouldn't have been a nice headline,

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Speaker 5: and so stories had to be cultivated to get this

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Speaker 5: more attention, get this in front of more people, and

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Speaker 5: there are obvious frustrations with you know, medical misogyny and

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Speaker 5: minimizing women's health issues, and so you know that led

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Speaker 5: the charge and how rapidly this story spread.

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Speaker 1: Well, can we talk about the actual study itself. I

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Speaker 1: understand there was a pretty full on process involved for

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Speaker 1: them to actually remove the lead and arsenic and cadmium

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Speaker 1: from those tampons. It didn't just leak out when they

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Speaker 1: got it where to put some blood on it. So

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Speaker 1: does that mean that if these metals are present within

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Speaker 1: a tampon, the chances of them even coming out into

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Speaker 1: you as you're using a tampon is pretty slim.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, you're absolutely correct. So the group that did this study,

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Speaker 5: the lead author, so the woman that owns the lab.

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Speaker 5: She is a geochemist, which means that she is an

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Speaker 5: expert in analytical chemistry tools, meaning methods to assess trace

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Speaker 5: levels of substances that are found in minerals and soil

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Speaker 5: and eediment and so on. And so essentially what they

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Speaker 5: did was they took thirty tampons in total, thirty individual tampons,

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Speaker 5: so it's a very small sample size to begin with,

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Speaker 5: and they acid digested them. So essentially they treat them

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Speaker 5: with a very concentrated acid to dissolve all of the material,

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Speaker 5: and then essentially you have this matrix that you can

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Speaker 5: then separate using an analytical chemistry tool to look for

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Speaker 5: very very minuscule levels of impurities. Essentially is what it's

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Speaker 5: used for. And so by doing this process, they were

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Speaker 5: able to find certain quantities of these substances, things like

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Speaker 5: arsenic and cadmium, cobal copper, iron, lead, zinc, et cetera. Now,

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Speaker 5: when we talk about detectable levels, these levels are very

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Speaker 5: very very small. So we're talking about parts per billion,

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Speaker 5: and a part per billion means one in one billion.

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Speaker 5: But if you want, I wanted to use an analogy,

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Speaker 5: we're talking about one second over thirty one point seven

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Speaker 5: years of time. So it's a very very tiny proportion

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Speaker 5: that we're talking about. These are minusule trace levels.

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Speaker 1: That definitely gives it some perspective.

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Speaker 3: I guess.

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Speaker 1: The other part of it is too, if these metals

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Speaker 1: were to buy some chance, actually leak out of that

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Speaker 1: tampon whilst it was being used by a woman, does

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Speaker 1: that study then even look into whether those would be

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Speaker 1: absorbed through the vagina into a woman's body.

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Speaker 5: No, it doesn't. So not only does this study not

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Speaker 5: actually assess any sort of physiological model. You know, basically,

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Speaker 5: they'd run this chemistry process, which is an appropriate method

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Speaker 5: to do analytical chemistry, it's not an appropriate method to

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Speaker 5: study what's happening inside a vagina. And so they didn't

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Speaker 5: create a mimic, so a physiological model. So there wasn't

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Speaker 5: an environment that simulated the pH and the temperature of

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Speaker 5: a vagina, which would be two thousand times less acidic

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Speaker 5: than the conditions they used, and ninety nine degrees fahrenheit

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Speaker 5: instead of you know, near boiling. And so you know,

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Speaker 5: they didn't assess whether these substances would actually leach out

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Speaker 5: of a tampon if we're simulating a vagina, So you

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Speaker 5: can't answer that question from the study. Yet headlines were saying,

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Speaker 5: you know, toxic metals absorbable by the vagina, like all

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Speaker 5: of these sorts of things. And the reality is the

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Speaker 5: reason that these substances are found in tampons is because

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Speaker 5: cotton is a plant, and plants pick up these substances,

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Speaker 5: these minerals and these metals from the soil as they grow,

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Speaker 5: and beyond that, these metals they bind very tightly, almost

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Speaker 5: irreversibly to the molecules in the cotton fibers, So it

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Speaker 5: would be very unrealistic that they would simply, you know,

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Speaker 5: disconnect and leach out of a tampon, you know, during use.

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Speaker 1: How do we feel about this whole process, this study

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Speaker 1: being done, the way that it was done, and then

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Speaker 1: how the data has been reported, because we have so

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Speaker 1: many conversations now about women being left out of the

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Speaker 1: medical process, especially when it comes to research, and that

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Speaker 1: a lot of it has been based on men, particularly

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Speaker 1: white men. So we want more research to be done

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Speaker 1: into things that affect women, But how do we balance

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Speaker 1: that with making sure we don't end up in a

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Speaker 1: situation we find ourselves like here, I totally agree.

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Speaker 5: So scientific studies, you know, when you're submitting a paper

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Speaker 5: for peer review and for publication, it's always looking at

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Speaker 5: a very small kind of chunk of a topic a

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Speaker 5: bigger topic, so it's always very iterative and in a

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Speaker 5: cruise over time. And that's why when you're looking at

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Speaker 5: making conclusions from science, you have to look at all

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Speaker 5: of the data within a topic. You can't just look

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Speaker 5: at a single study and make these decisions. So you know,

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Speaker 5: in reality, this study could have been published, and it

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Speaker 5: likely would have never gotten a media attention if people

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Speaker 5: weren't scraping the internet for buzzwords like lead and toxicity

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Speaker 5: and absorption and you know, all these keywords that people

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Speaker 5: kind of scour for. But even in the first place,

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Speaker 5: you know, it should have been more robustly conducted. You

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Speaker 5: need larger sample sizes. There was a lot of variability

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Speaker 5: in the actual controls, or the actual methodology of the

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Speaker 5: study had some flaws. Now that being said, it could

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Speaker 5: have been the baseline for okay, well, there are some

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Speaker 5: residuals in tampons. Now we're going to study this. Right now,

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Speaker 5: We're going to mimic a vagina, and we're going to

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Speaker 5: see if this actually does something. But instead, you know,

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Speaker 5: the writers, the authors of the study made these kind

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Speaker 5: of insinuations that this was happening, when instead they should

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Speaker 5: have been much more clear and definitive, like this is

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Speaker 5: a very pilot study. All this is saying is that

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Speaker 5: there are substances that are found in the environment that

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Speaker 5: are now, you know, in a tampon. But they also

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Speaker 5: didn't address how these levels compare to levels in a

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Speaker 5: myriad of other products. Right, the levels that you find

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Speaker 5: in food and in water, and in textiles cotton clothing,

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Speaker 5: and so there was no balancing of we don't have

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Speaker 5: to panic because these are the levels and all these

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Speaker 5: other things, and there's been no demonstrated harm. And in

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Speaker 5: a situation where we are trying to get good quality

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Speaker 5: research on women on women's health topics, I feel like

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Speaker 5: this really did a disservice to that. I think we

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Speaker 5: need more research, but it needs to be research that's relevant.

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Speaker 5: It needs to be research that's actually going to tell

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Speaker 5: us something useful. And this didn't even factor in our

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Speaker 5: bodies into the story.

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Speaker 1: According to Canadian American gynecologist, New York Times columnist and author,

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Speaker 1: doctor Jen Gunter, who sends out a regular a newsletter

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Speaker 1: called the Vegenda, scaring women is profitable.

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Speaker 2: She writes as if on cue self styled alternative medicine, doctors, naturopaths,

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Speaker 2: and menstrual influences are claiming this is proof that women

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Speaker 2: should stuff moss in their vaginas instead. The massive irony

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Speaker 2: is that many push unregulated supplements. Lead contamination in supplements

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Speaker 2: is a big issue, and so the irony of people

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Speaker 2: who profit from supplements jumping on the tampon's a toxic

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Speaker 2: train is not lost on me.

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Speaker 1: Doctor Gunter also asks whether you would know how much

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Speaker 1: lead is in a serving of kale, for example, or

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Speaker 1: a cup of tea. Lead can turn up in a

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Speaker 1: lot of things we consume, but do we need to

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Speaker 1: be alarmed? Well maybe if you live in places like

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Speaker 1: Port Pirie in South Australia where the town is actually

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Speaker 1: built around a lead smelter and so the town's population

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Speaker 1: is exposed more than the rest of us. But otherwise

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Speaker 1: where it comes to tampons, No, so there's nothing to

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Speaker 1: worry about.

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Speaker 5: Wow, Lusha some important talk.

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Speaker 1: Wow, I'll say we did. Thanks for taking some time

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Speaker 1: to feed your mind with us today. If there's a

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Speaker 1: news story you want some more clarification on, hit us up.

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Speaker 1: You can email the Quickie at mumamea dot com dot

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Speaker 1: au or find us on Instagram, threads and Facebook. The

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Speaker 1: Quikie is produced by me Claire Murphy and our senior

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Speaker 1: producer Taylor Strano, with audio production by Tom Lyne

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Speaker 5: M