To all my gentlemen readers, I beg your pardon for introducing an indelicate subject. Feel free to skip this column since it discusses an intimate female bodily function.
Five years ago a friend started a cottage industry making washable reusable feminine hygiene items. She used lovely patterns of soft flannel and organic cotton. We (my two daughters and I) were just about her first customer since I’ve long been dissatisfied with disposable options. We’ve been greatly satisfied – absolutely delighted, in fact – with these homemade, reusable products. We never run out (especially important during, say, a blizzard when we can’t make a dash for the store), and we haven’t had to purchase sanitary pads in five years. The soft cotton and flannel is easy on our “lady parts”; they’re pretty and feminine; and they’re far more comfortable than those sterile plastic non-biodegradable things available in every grocery store.
So imagine my outrage when a reader brought to my attention some new FDA regulations classifying washable hygiene products as Class I Medical Devices requiring government oversight as well as hefty fees paid to – you guessed it – the FDA.
Specifically, homemade feminine hygiene products will now fall under the Medical Device User Fee and Modernization Act. According to a superb and comprehensive write-up on The Organic Prepper website, “FDA Regulation #884.5435 states that a reusable menstrual pad maker must be ‘FDA compliant’ – which means they must pay a yearly registration fee of $3,646 to remain in business for 2015 and a fee of $3,872 for 2016.”
Here’s the document specifying menstrual pad characteristics. It outlines such things as design and dimensions, absorbency range, component materials, performance characteristics and labeling. Just imagine the dangerous fallout if such details were left up to the free market (and customers) to determine.
The FDA (cough) “recommends” that manufacturers include “engineering drawings of the pad” when applying for permission. It additionally “recommends” that these entrepreneurial housewives “conduct biocompatibility testing as described in the FDA guidance, ‘Use of International Standard ISO-10993, Biological Evaluation of Medical Devices Part-1: Evaluation and Testing.'”
So here’s a modern version of something women have been using for thousands of years to handle their personal hygiene needs … and yet suddenly we’re in so much danger from that horrible soft flannel and organic cotton that we need government oversight. What’s next, government permission to menstruate due to unauthorized blood flow? Does reusable feminine hygiene really sound like a category of products that requires FDA intervention and regulation?
In other words, when the government wants to get into your underwear, you know they’ve hit a new low.
The Organic Prepper points out some reasons why women chose washable and reusable hygiene products instead of disposable:
- They’re non-toxic, unlike the bleached white, chemical-laden store-bought varieties.
- They aren’t piling up in landfills.
- They allow women to be self-sufficient – they don’t have to rely on a trip to Wal-Mart every month.
The site’s Daisy Luther also includes a quick primer on the contents of sanitary napkins, which is nothing short of horrifying. Laboratory analyses of a popular brand of disposable hygiene products found toxic chemicals classified as carcinogenic as well as reproductive and developmental toxins, including styrene (a human carcinogen), chloromethane (a reproductive toxicant), chloroethane (a carcinogen), chloroform (a carcinogen, reproductive toxicant and neurotoxin) and acetone (an irritant). The analysis also points out the manufacturer discloses none of these chemicals on the product.
Yet the FDA must regulate homemade napkins. And charge hefty fees. “Don’t forget the fees,” the Organic Prepper reminds us.
The FDA’s website has the peppy slogan, “Protecting and Promoting Your Health.” What they aren’t explaining in this particular case is how they’re protecting our health. Are they suggesting that non-breathable non-biodegradable dioxin-laden disposable feminine hygiene is superior to home-stitched organic cotton and flannel?
With such ridiculous fees and restrictions and requirements imposed on the manufacture of homemade sanitary items, it will (of course) put this category of thrifty and entrepreneurial housewives out of business. Either that, or these businesses will go underground – thus turning formerly industrious, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens into criminals. Isn’t that nice?
There is an online White House petition urging the government to “lower or eliminate the registration fee for makers of reusable menstrual products,” but it needs to reach 100,000 signatures by Jan. 6, 2015, and as of this writing it has only 8,564 of the needed signatures. Although I ask everyone to sign this petition, I’ll admit I question how much good these online petitions do. My understanding is reaching the signature goal merely requires a response or acknowledgment from the government, NOT a redress of the specific grievances.
So where can we turn to abolish this absurd and unnecessary mandate?
This kind of ludicrous and preposterous government regulation absolutely leaves me sputtering with fury and disgust. I know of two businesses making superior feminine hygiene products. In both cases, the entrepreneurs are housewives contributing to their family’s income through hard work and sensitive responses to their customers’ needs. The government has no business regulating or imposing fines and testing requirements on these products.
“There was a time,” notes the Organic Prepper, “when ‘FDA Approved’ was a vote of credibility. We could purchase a product and feel safe because the government watchdogs had checked it out thoroughly before allowing it to be sold. Now, ‘FDA Approved’ means ‘The company that produced this product has enough money and clout to allow it to be sold.’ Like a bad penny, it seems whatever topic I’m looking into, the FDA keeps turning up. The FDA has a central role in the increasing tyranny in the United States, and we, as taxpayers, are funding them to do this.”
This might be a good time to remember C.S. Lewis’ words: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
Entrepreneurial housewives don’t have the extensive resources (or slimy morals) to grease the palms of politicians. Therefore they must be punished and their businesses closed down.
Your tax dollars at work. Grrrrr.
Media wishing to interview Patrice Lewis, please contact [email protected].
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