Tonight, I will be heading to Puebla for tomorrow’s Alternatives Forum (full details in yesterday’s Spanish entry below). I will be displaying Sea Pearls (http://www.jadeandpearl.com/), natural sea sponge tampons, and The Keeper (www.mykeepercup.com), a small cup that holds menstrual fluids rather than absorbing them. I was also hoping to display other more environmentally/health-friendly menstrual products such as cloth pads (http://www.lunapads.com), but I think somewhere between the Canadian and Mexican postal companies, the allowable room for inefficiency was somehow multiplied exponentially; alas, the samples from Canada have yet to arrive...

I don't know how this will go over - I imagine, aside from the taboo nature of talking about bloody bodily functions, the idea of washing out re-usable menstrual products may make some Mexican women squeamish (I know I was when the notion was first suggested to me). Still, I figure a forum like this is probably an ideal environment in which to test the waters.

I remember the first time I heard of the Keeper, in 1st year university, in the SFU women's centre, where I happened upon a demonstration similar to what I plan to give in Puebla… Lightly put, the concept seemed weird and definitely unappealing. Yet, a few months later, the logic (both health and environmental) set in, and I ended up trying out The Keeper – after all, it has a 3-month money-back guarantee. Six years later, I’m still using it.

I am very happy to think that I am not one of the women putting 10 000 to 17 000 disposable menstrual products into landfills over my lifetime, not to mention all the toxic substances in most commercial pads and tampons I’m not exposing myself to. For example, dioxin, a by-product of the chlorine bleaching process used by all major brands of tampons has a number of serious health impacts: the effects of shredding rayon fibers from tampons in women's vaginas, the probable link between dioxin and endometriosis, the possibility of cervical cancer being linked to prolonged tampon use over many years, toxic shock syndrome, headaches and so on.

See http://www.bloodsisters.org/bloodsisters/impacts.html or http://www.mum.org/ or http://www.mercola.com/2002/jul/3/feminine_hygiene.htm or search the internet to learn more.