Cotton Top Sanitary Pads

Details

A pad is worn against mucous membrane for four to seven days a month for thirty-odd years, and it is sold with less material disclosure than a packet of biscuits. So this listing names every layer. Start with the top sheet, because that is where the category's commonest cheat lives. Cotton-feel, cotton-soft, cotton-touch and cotton-like are not cotton. They are spunbond polypropylene engineered to feel like cotton, and a pack can carry any of those four words with no cotton in the pad at all. A second version laminates a thin cotton scrim over a polypropylene layer, so cotton top sheet is true and the fibre against you is still partly plastic. The top sheet here is a 100 percent cotton carded non-woven at 30 gsm, fibre identity confirmed per lot by FTIR and by optical microscopy, with no polypropylene layer laminated into it and nothing between it and the core. What is under it is polypropylene, and we are naming that too. There is an acquisition and distribution layer beneath the cotton, 45 gsm PP, and it is what stops fluid pooling on the surface; without it a cotton top sheet stays wet and the cotton claim becomes a comfort problem rather than a comfort feature. It does not touch you. The core is elemental-chlorine-free fluff pulp with sodium polyacrylate super absorbent polymer, the back sheet is a breathable microporous polyethylene film, and the adhesive is a styrene block copolymer hot melt on the back sheet and wings only. Three of those four are plastics. This is a single-use plastic-containing product and the disposal section below says so plainly rather than putting a leaf on the pack.

• Top sheet: 100 percent cotton carded non-woven, 30 gsm, FTIR and microscopy per lot. Not cotton-feel, not cotton-touch, not a scrim over polypropylene
• Acquisition layer: polypropylene non-woven, 45 gsm, named because cotton top sheet must not be allowed to imply the whole pad is cotton
• Core: totally chlorine free fluff pulp with sodium polyacrylate SAP. Regular carries 1.6 g of SAP, Large 2.2 g, Overnight 2.9 g. SAP is a polymer, it is in the plastic family, and it is what makes a pad hold fluid for eight hours
• Back sheet: breathable microporous polyethylene film laminated to PP non-woven, moisture vapour transmission 2,000 g per square metre per 24 hours by ASTM E96, which is the figure behind the word breathable
• No chlorine bleaching. The pulp is totally chlorine free, bleached with oxygen and hydrogen peroxide. AOX below the limit of quantification, and dioxins and furans by ISO 18073 below the limit of quantification, per lot
• Absorbency by the method, not by a drop count. Measured gravimetrically to IS 5405, the Indian Standard for sanitary napkins, and reported in grams of fluid held: Regular 55 g, Large 75 g, Overnight 95 g. A row of little drops printed on a pack is a picture, not a measurement
• pH of the aqueous extract 6.8, measured to IS 5405
• Fragrance-free and no odour control of any kind. No parfum, no masking agent, no deodorant strip, no menthol or cooling agent, and no anion chip. The negative ion chip sold across Asia on an odour and hygiene claim has no accepted evidence behind it and some tested lots have carried measurable radioactivity, so there is none in this pad and there never will be
• Phthalate-free, tested by GC-MS for DEHP, DBP, BBP, DINP, DIDP and DNOP, none detected. Formaldehyde on the cotton top sheet below the limit of quantification by ISO 14184-1
• No dye, no print and no optical brightener on any surface, tested under UV for fluorescent whitening agents
• Honest disposal position: this pad is not biodegradable, not compostable and not flushable. Wrap it in the paper wrapper it came in and put it in dry waste. Under the Solid Waste Management Rules 2016 the maker has to provide that wrapper, and ours is paper rather than a plastic disposal bag
• Honest trade-off, and it is the one the category will not print: if you want a genuinely low-waste period, that is a menstrual cup or cloth pads, and it is not this. A pad that holds fluid for eight hours without leaking holds it in a polymer. We would rather sell you an honest pad than a green one
• Change every four to six hours regardless of how full it feels. The reason is skin and hygiene, not capacity: a whole period is commonly 30 to 40 ml in total, so a single Regular pad's 55 g of tested capacity is far more than a day usually asks of it