Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 26th February 2025 Lords Chamber

I should warn your Lordships that I plan to press Amendment 9 when the appropriate moment comes.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak to the four amendments in my name in this group, starting with Amendment 26. Backed by the noble Baronesses, Lady Freeman of Steventon and Lady Smith of Llanfaes, it is about period-products regulation. It sets out a requirement that, within one year of the Act being passed, the Secretary of State must create regulations to reduce the health risks of period products.

I have circulated to many noble Lords, and will be delighted to share it with any who has missed it, a briefing prepared by the Women’s Environmental Network. The briefing is now complete, and includes a list of NGOs that support the briefing, which backs the amendment: the Women’s Environmental Network, the Pesticide Collaboration, the Hazards Campaign, City to Sea, Hey Girls, UK Youth 4 Nature, Pesticide Action Network UK, Natracare, the Soil Association, MCS-Aware, Savitri, the Menstruation Research Network, the Rivers Trust, Period Positive, Fidra and the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. There is a lot of backing for this amendment.

I offer my thanks to the Minister and his officials, who have kindly provided their time for a science-rich, detailed debate looking at policy in this area, but I am afraid that they have not convinced me that we do not need this amendment. Although many large-scale across-product actions need to be taken, this is something that can be done now, directly for health. It is perfectly possible, and this amendment would deliver it.

These period products are, of course, as the removal of VAT recognised, a necessity and not a luxury consumer item, used by roughly 15 million people who menstruate each month. Currently, these products theoretically come under the General Product Safety Regulations, but there is no specific mention of period products there. That lack of specific regulation means that there are few limitations or restrictions on the presence of potentially harmful chemicals or additives in period products. This is in sharp contrast to, for example, cosmetics.

The practical reality is that period products are used next to or in one of the most absorbent parts of the human body, unlike the other consumer items which come under the GPSR. Internal products, such as tampons, menstrual cups and discs, have direct access to the bloodstream. The absorption rate through the vulva is much greater than through the skin of the rest of the body.

In the past 10 years or so we have seen an advertising arms race among period products. A worrying number of potentially harmful chemicals and metals have often been explicitly added to or are found in single-use disposable and reusable period products. I went into this at some length in Committee, but I will identify just some of the biggest issues.

Biocidal silver, an untested additive currently waiting to be assessed for safety by the UK Government, is being used in many period pants as an antimicrobial. There is research showing that it affects the microbiome in the vulva. After the first 10 washes, 72% of it washes out. It is very toxic to aquatic life and contributes to antimicrobial resistance. I note that the National Audit Office has explicitly said today that we are not collectively doing anything like enough about antimicrobial resistance.

Also found in period products are endocrine-disrupting chemicals, such as phthalates, bisphenols and parabens, all of which have been identified as disrupting the function of our endocrine system. They are linked to cancer, reproductive and development disorders, birth defects, asthma and allergies. PFAS is an acronym that will be familiar to many noble Lords as forever chemicals. These have been found in period products and are used for waterproofing. They are also widely used elsewhere, as I will come back to. There are also heavy metals. Last year, lead, arsenic and cadmium were all found in tampons tested in the UK and internationally. For lead, there is no safe level of exposure.

Of course, I now come to microplastics. Despite their apparent cottony appearance, tampons and pads can both be up to 90% plastic and very likely continually shed microplastics. I say “very likely”, but I can point to research from Galway that recently found microplastics from period products in outlets from wastewater treatment plants, having gone through those plants. The University of Manchester found that tampons can shed 17 billion nanoplastic fibres—an average of 9.4 billion per tampon. That means people are being exposed to 86 trillion fibres over a lifetime of use.

Synthetic fragrances, encouraged by advertising, have been used in period products to address consumer anxiety about the social construct of so-called menstrual odours. These add nothing to functionality but contribute to stigma. If a comparable amount of fragrance was found in a cosmetic product it would have to be labelled, yet there is no such regulation for period products.

Noble Lords might say, “Oh, but this is an amendment that says the Government must act within one year”, but I can point them to New York state, Catalonia, Wales and Scotland, where regulations are already in place. The European ecolabel prohibits the use of many of the chemicals I referred to, although it is unfortunately only a voluntary code of excellence. These examples show that it is possible to act. What is needed is political will to protect our population. That is what I am asking for and I have given notice to the House that it is my intention to put this amendment to a vote.

I refer also to my other amendments in this group, which help put Amendment 26 on period products in context. Amendment 33 is a development from two amendments I tabled in Committee about the harmful impacts of clothing and a call for a ban on single-use plastics. As one is supposed to, I have developed that in bringing this forward on Report to see what we might be able to do in the short term to understand the scale of the problem we face.

I say this in the context of a study out this month that many noble Lords may have seen about the number of tiny fragments of plastic that will be in your brain. They were thought not to be able to cross the blood-brain barrier, but they very clearly are. The study showed that the concentration of microplastics in analysed brains increased by 50% from 2016 to 2024. On examination, the brains of 12 deceased patients with dementia had three to five times as much microplastic as people who died without suffering from dementia. That is one study, but we know that the amount of plastics produced in the world doubles every 10 to 15 years. The figures from these brains reflect what we are doing to the environment.

Microplastics are, of course, just one in the cocktail, alongside PFAS, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, pesticides and pharmaceutical products, all of which are accumulating in our environment every day. Governments and regulators have failed to consider how human bodies are being barraged and penetrated by these dangerous materials, and how they interact with each other, potentially damage our health and make us more susceptible to the impacts of other challenges, be they these materials or infectious agents.

When I started the discussion of these issues in Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, acknowledged that it had started him wondering about the non-iron shirt he was wearing that day, what had altered the fibres of the cotton to produce such a result, and what impact it might be having on his health. The answer is almost certainly a resin that releases formaldehyde, which is a known carcinogen and mutagen. It might also be a direct immediate problem for anyone who suffers from contact dermatitis. The EU has introduced new stricter regulations on that substance, starting from next year, noting that people are likely to be exposed to it from a wide range of sources—from car interiors to furniture, and from electronics to construction materials.

When they tackle these issues, Governments’ responses are almost invariably siloed. It is great, and world-leading, that the French Government have just banned the manufacture, import and sale of most PFAS-treated products from next year and of all PFAS-treated textiles by 2030, but they are tackling just one issue among many, and cleaning up the universal contamination of this class of chemicals just cannot be done.

I said I would tie this to Amendment 26. If we think about the bodies of people using period products in our society today, they are, like all of us, exposed to all of this and they are also getting the extra from the period products.

Finally, and very quickly, I come to Amendment 27A and the linked Amendment 66. This is a probing amendment that relates to the Environment Act. It is now 1,205 days since that Act became law.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I could have split these amendments out but chose not to. Perhaps I can have another minute, as others have had? The Act grants the Government powers to work towards the ending of the UK’s contribution to deforestation. Are the Government—

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

I am sorry to intervene but the rules are quite clear.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I think a previous noble Lord spoke for 12 minutes. I will ask the Minister a question and write a comment piece to cover the rest.

Do the Government plan to bring forward rapidly the necessary secondary legislation under Schedule 17 to the Environment Act, and to confirm that regulations will take the most ambitious form possible within existing UK law?

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly to Amendment 26, to which I have added my name. Period products are currently regulated in the UK only under the General Product Safety Regulations, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said. In many other countries they come under more stringent regulations, even being considered as medical products. It is fantastic to see innovations in period products—we have seen improvements to them and a greater range of options over recent decades—but innovations can raise safety risks as well. I will give one example.

In the late 1970s, a super-absorbent alternative to cotton in tampons was invented. It could absorb 20 times its own volume, and so it needed changing much less frequently. It seemed life-changing. Unfortunately, its super-absorbency and longer use created the perfect environment for the bacteria staph aureus. Then, the tampon caused scratches because it absorbed too much and left people dry. It was a deadly combination. The bacteria could then get into the bloodstream, causing toxic shock—a syndrome that could rapidly kill, with minimal warning signs. Thousands of people died from it before the problem was identified and the product withdrawn.