What makes a good tampon

Again, totally your call, according to the doctor. It can be inserted manually or with the help of an applicator and should have a snug fit and be comfortable, she adds. Indeed they do. Eight hours is the absolute max, says Dr. Byrdie contributor Melanie Rud has over a decade of experience in the beauty industry, writing for some of the biggest magazines and websites out there.

She also frequently covers health and wellness. Meet the Expert. If you know of one we should consider, please email us at contact byrdie. Thank you [email] for signing up.

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I Accept Show Purposes. Reviews Product Reviews. By Melanie Rud. Melanie Rud. Melanie Rud is a Chicago-based freelance beauty and lifestyle writer and editor. You can find her work in Allure, Pure Wow, Refinery29, and more. Byrdie's Editorial Guidelines. Medically reviewed by Sara Twogood, MD. Sara Twogood, MD is an obstetrician-gynecologist at Cedars Sinai with a passion for educating the public about female health and wellness. Reviewed by Sara Twogood, MD. Our Top Picks. Best Overall:.

Best for Beginners:. Best for Swimming:. The unique FlexFit technology creates complete and total protection so you never have to stress about leaks.

Best Budget:. These have all the same great features as some pricier picks, think organic cotton, and a compact, BPA-free applicator. Best Plastic-Free:. Best Applicator-Free:. A rounded tip makes manual insertion surprisingly quick and easy. Best Menstrual Cup:. It's made from an ultra-comfortable, medical-grade silicone that fits nice and snugly, and can even be worn for up to 12 hours.

Reusable tampons may carry additional risks of infections such as yeast, fungal, and bacterial infections. While you may have heard about reusable tampons, the FDA has not cleared or approved these products.

The FDA discourages the use of reusable tampons. Toxic shock syndrome TSS is rare and is caused by a toxic substance that is produced by certain kinds of bacteria. The toxic substance produced by the bacteria can cause organ damage including kidney, heart, and liver failure , shock, and even death. Rates of reported TSS cases associated with tampons have declined significantly over the years. One reason is that the FDA evaluates whether a tampon enhances the growth of the bacteria that causes TSS before the product can be legally marketed.

Only tampons that have been cleared by the FDA can be legally marketed in the U. In addition, more informative tampon labeling, as well as educational efforts by the FDA and manufacturers, may have contributed to the reduction in TSS cases.

For more information on TSS, see the tampon safety tips, below. You may want to talk with your health care provider about whether tampons are right for you. If you use tampons, consider the following:. Tampon Safety Tips You may want to talk with your health care provider about whether tampons are right for you.

Like the O. Pro Comforts version, the O. Organics tampons performed well on our fiber-shedding test. Whereas most organic applicator-free tampons we tried produced only a moderate amount of fuzz, others got pretty cotton-ball-like at the bottom and left behind some chunks of fiber on the string and on our hands. We found O. Organic tampons to be the least sheddy among organic digital competitors they tied with tampons from Rael for this distinction.

Tampon manufacturers are not required to disclose exactly what is in their tampons or in what quantities. But New York is poised to become the first state to mandate that all menstrual product makers disclose all of their ingredients, and many other states are starting to follow suit. A handful of bills have also proposed that the US Congress require tampon manufacturers to disclose the chemicals and processes they use in manufacturing sanitary products. The ingredients listed there are the same as those noted on Tampax boxes.

Solimo, an Amazon brand, forwarded us a screenshot of the side of its tampon box. Other companies chose not to respond at all. However, even organic cotton can be pretty harsh on the environment, and it still requires organic pesticides to grow. Tampon ingredients that tend to give people pause include rayon and dioxins. Rayon: Many tampons are made from a mix of cotton and rayon. Some people worry that synthetic fibers increase the risk of toxic shock syndrome because they were implicated in the TSS boom in the late s, but tampon makers no longer use those particular fibers.

Dioxins: Tampons undergo bleaching during the manufacturing process. This step makes them white in color and also helps remove waxes and anything else that might impede absorption. That means that the process uses no elemental chlorine gas but might include chlorine dioxide.

But tampon makers no longer bleach their products with elemental chlorine. Plus, dioxins are all around in low levels: Meat, dairy, fish, and shellfish all contain dioxins. And nothing we read raised health concerns about the materials in the applicators. You can choose between plastic and cardboard based on other parameters without having to think about safety; your choice should come down to comfort and how you feel about the garbage you produce.

Although Tampax claims that its cardboard applicators are biodegradable and flushable, many plumbers disagree. The only things that should go down a toilet, they say, are the three Ps : pee, poop, and toilet paper. Plastic applicators are not biodegradable or recyclable. The vagina is full of bacteria. On rare occasions, people with vaginas have a natural population of a bacteria strain that results in toxic shock syndrome TSS when it grows unchecked: either Staphylococcus aureus known colloquially as staph , or even more rarely, Streptococcus pyogenes colloquially known as strep.

TSS can result from things other than tampons, including menstrual cups. But the materials used in certain tampons made in the late s and early s such as polyester foam and cross-linked carboxymethylcellulose provided a particularly suitable environment for the bacteria that can cause TSS, and most people know about TSS because of the spike in tampon-related cases around that time.

Between and , the Center for Disease Control as it was called at the time recorded more than 2, cases of TSS, with over resulting deaths and many other people experiencing serious complications. When the CDC dug further, it found that the vast majority of the cases were in people who were menstruating. One tampon in particular, Rely, was strongly linked to many TSS cases. Researchers who study S. Those materials are no longer present in tampons.

Between and , it noted 5, recorded cases. Researchers who looked at the rate of TSS between and reported in that the rate of TSS remained low and relatively stable. Since the early s , the FDA has required tampon manufacturers to put warnings about TSS on their boxes, reminding people not to leave tampons in for an extended period of time eight hours tends to be the maximum.

Because tampons are not sterile and can grow bacteria and mold after a certain period of time, tampon boxes must also include expiration dates, which you should check. Philip Tierno, a professor of microbiology and pathology at the NYU School of Medicine and one of the experts on TSS, told us in an interview that at the age of 15, a person who menstruates has about a 60 percent chance of having natural antibodies to protect them.

That percentage goes up over the years: At 20, they have a 75 percent chance of being protected; at 30, they have a 90 percent chance of having those safety antibodies. Symptoms of TSS include a sudden fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle aches, a sunburn-like rash, headaches, and seizures. To reduce risk, avoid leaving a tampon in for longer than eight hours. One study we found says that organic-cotton tampons decrease the risk of TSS dramatically , but another study found the opposite to be true.

We will consider the moderately priced and social media fave The Honey Pot tampons for a future update to this guide. Likewise, Rael debuted an organic applicator tampon after we finalized our testing pool, and Seventh Generation recently downsized and revamped its tampon offerings.

We will consider these brands in a future update. All the tampons we tested worked fine when we filled them with the amount of liquid they were rated to hold. Our picks are the tampons that testers said exceeded expectations. The conventional, non-applicator O. Original sometimes stuck to the cellophane during unwrapping, and we found it more prone to shedding than our digital picks.

In , O. However, in our tests its uniquely tiny light digital version was beloved by people who had this level of flow. Panel testers disliked U by Kotex Click , our previous top pick, because of its compact applicator, which had a tendency to fail.

We also tested organic tampons from Oi , Rael , and Organyc and found that none were standouts worth paying more for compared with O.

We chose not to include Oi Girl in our panel test due to similarities with its sibling brand, Oi. We chose not to test them. None stood out from the field: Compared with Tampax Pearl, these tampons had inferior applicators or wrappers.

Playtex Sport Compact and Playtex Stella seemed to have the same tampon as Playtex Sport within slightly different plastic applicators, so we did not include these in the testing pool. We decided not to add these to the panel test. The Just tampons were more expensive than most of the conventional competition at the time of our research, and Brandless shut down. Although we recognize that some people who prefer not to or are unable to insert digital tampons without an applicator may find these waste-reducing options useful, we found them clumsy to use overall.

According to obstetrician-gynecologist Jen Gunter, these are unsafe. Calculation is based on the manufacturer-suggested retail price MSRP at the time of publication.