And now for something completely different...

[fangirl715]

I just saw this article on the BBC this morning, and decided I had to pass it along:
A man in India invents a machine for women to make low-cost sanitary napkinsThe whole process wasn't exactly skittles and beer for him; his wife (who inspired the whole project when he learned she had to use rags) left him, as did the rest of his family, and the

Comments

[fangirl715]

I think they're being made of cotton/cellulose, pretty typical old-school materials, as opposed to some of the various new-fangled ones that I"m sure aren't biodegradable/burnable; it may not be the best, but in terms of their health, it's a damn sight better than what they've been using. (The article goes into a lot more detail as to the other options; I can't even imagine how you'd use sand, unless it's a matter of just squatting over it all day and never being able to leave the house.) Apparently local cultural taboos are such that you can't really wash your rags properly and dry them in the sun (if they could, I'd say reusable cotton pads would be just the ticket), and bad menstrual hygiene is behind a lot of Indian women's health problems; while this may not be ideal from an ecological standpoint right now, it's probably the best option for the time being. Hopefully the culture will "loosen up" to the point that more eco-friendly methods can be used, but that will take time.

(As I understand it, commercial products of this sort came about during/after WWI, after field nurses were making their own pads out of wound dressing and gauze, since they couldn't really be boiling out their rags on site. It took a while to catch on, but from what I understand from my mother & grandmother, these pads really were a godsend, even w/the sanitary belts. I'm old enough to remember using old-school napkins w/a "sanitary panty" with skinny elastics that held the napkin in place; the pads were bulky as hell and did kinda suck, but it was more secure than the belt. The first adhesive pads were Kotex's New Freedom, and they came out in early 1973, right about the time I started bleeding; they were supposed to be flushable if you tore them right, but they stopped mentioning that in the ads pretty quickly; I'm guessing that there were a lot of plugged-up pipes for a while there. Mini-pads came along in the late '70s, and it was wonderful not to need a whole big napkin for light days or to wear w/a tampon on heavier days, although in retrospect they were thicker than some of the maxipads out now. Technology marches on...)

[bedfull_o_books]

I remember the belt well. Bulky, bulky, bulky pads. Horrible. But yes, better than staying home lying on a bunch of towels all day.

Stupid social taboos.....