The FDA regulates pads and tampons as class I or II medical devices, and there’s no general law requiring ingredient disclosure for products in those categories, unlike food or cosmetics, Scranton explains. But a shift took place in October 2021, when a New York State law spotlighting pads, tampons, menstrual cups, and period underwear went into effect; it called for “a plain and conspicuous printed list of all ingredients which shall be listed in order of predominance,” printed on or attached to the packaging. While it didn’t hit the federal level, the law had a “national impact,” marking a significant move toward transparency in the US, per a 2022 WVE report investigating the ingredients disclosed on menstrual products.
Even before then, though, the tide was starting to turn. For instance, Playtex phased out its scented “Fresh Balance” tampons in 2020. Nicole M. Harris, the head of marketing at Edgewell Personal Care, tells SELF that while there’s still some demand for scented products, a lot of consumers have more nuanced views on fragrance: “Scent is, by and large, not something that women want to associate with products that are going in an intimate part,” she says. “So they want to take care of the odor but not through means of a perfume or an added fragrance… Added fragrance in feminine care products is not widely available or a growing space. If anything, it’s going the other direction.”
Biber agrees: “Everyone’s trending towards a ‘less is more’ approach.”
In fact, in November 2021, the official Tampax brand account wrote in response to a tweet, “As of Spring 2021, we said goodbye to scented tampons and we no longer manufacture products that contain fragrance in the U.S.!” But while the brand’s Pearl Super Scented tampons are no longer available on the Tampax website, they are available in what appears to be the official Tampax store on Amazon US, as well as Kroger.com and Walmart.com. And P&G offers Always scented pads, which are currently available on its website. (A spokesperson from Proctor & Gamble, the parent company of Tampax, confirmed receipt of SELF’s detailed list of questions, including a question about whether or not Tampax still manufactures and/or sells scented period products in the US, but did not respond prior to publication.)
Around the same time Playtex stopped manufacturing its Fresh Balance tampons, it launched a line of products branded as “Odor Shield,” which claims to have “2X more odor protection” on its packaging. It isn’t branded as a scented product, but rather “an odor neutralizer,” Biber says. Similarly, she notes that certain Carefree pads also have “odor control” technology. “They’re unscented,” she says, “but to get at that odor control, if you were to open up the product, there would be a scent associated with that odor neutralizer.”
If you’re confused by this, that’s because it is confusing. The gist: Just because a product, including pads or tampons, is labeled “unscented” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s also “fragrance-free,” unless otherwise specified. To be truly fragrance-free, a product shouldn’t contain any fragranced materials or “masking scents” at all. As for the “unscented” label? That “means it doesn’t smell like anything; it doesn’t mean there’s no masking ingredient,” Ginger King, MBA, a cosmetic chemist based in New Jersey, tells SELF. “If there’s a bad odor, you can use a [masking] ingredient to cover it so you don’t smell anything. It doesn’t mean it’s not fragranced.” Various chemicals have functions that aren’t necessarily “adding” scent to a product, she explains, but rather making one last or simply covering it up.