McMaster research targets menstrual cup ‘mess’ with absorbent tablets to tackle period stigma

Close to a quarter of the world’s population menstruates, but innovation in menstrual products has been sparse, says a McMaster researcher.

“This is a field ripe for innovation. There is so much that can be done. And then there are very, very simple needs that are not met,” said McMaster University professor Zeinab Hosseinidoust.

Hosseinidoust works out of the department of chemical engineering at the Hamilton university. 

She worked alongside associate professor Tohid Didar to create smart tablets that work with menstrual cups to make them more accessible and reduce the “mess” that can come along with them.

Researchers at McMaster University develop tablet to make menstrual cups less ‘messy’

According to UN Women, the United Nations agency charged with working for gender equality and empowering women, over two billion people in the world menstruate. In Canada, one in six people who menstruate have experienced period poverty, with the average person spending around $6,000 in period products over their lifetime, and one in four Canadians “agree periods are dirty and unclean,” according to federal government research.

Menstrual cups have become increasingly popular in recent years for being eco-friendly and cost-effective because they can be reused for years. 

Hosseinidoust said she wondered why people weren’t using menstrual cups, and decided to look at comments under social media posts.

“A lot of them ask, ‘what about the mess?’ So there is that concern, whether it’s real or not,” she said.

It was a simple solution to a simple problem, said Hosseinidoust.

“It was just a matter of opening the doors and looking at the problem, rather than ignoring it, which one can argue that when it comes to menstrual health and women’s health, that has been the attitude,” she said.

Dior David, a McMaster university student, told CBC Hamilton while the process is not messy for her, the tablets are a “great idea.”

David said using a tablet like that would allow her to change out a cup or disc in a public bathroom without having to walk out to a sink to rinse and said if available, she’d use it.

“It would honestly just make everything more convenient. I think that one of the reasons why I decided to empty my cup in the showers is because I want to avoid the mess, and [a tablet] would just be very easy to deal with,” said David.

Jennifer Abraham, who also goes to McMaster university, told CBC Hamilton it’s “cool to hear about innovations in the menstrual industry.”

“I think it’s important that we have more products, more education about it, so that way people can choose an option that works best for them,” she said.

Abraham said it’s important research like this exists to promote conversation and reduce stigma around periods.

“Things like this impact how a woman is able to function and that can impact her role in society,” she said.

The tablets are single use, which defeat two of the purposes of menstrual cups: environmental impact and cost-effectiveness. 

However, they are also biodegradable, flushable, cheap to make and crafted from a renewable resource: seaweed.

Hosseinidoust said if the product can help people who menstruate become more willing to try a menstrual cup, it would be helping to reduce the billions of disposable menstrual products used worldwide on a daily basis, essentially “hitting multiple birds with one stone.”

In addition to that, the tablets also have the potential to detect things like UTIs, bacterial vaginosis and staph infections. 

Bacteriophages, which have been the focus of Hosseinidoust’s research, are viruses that infect bacteria. She said they can kill bad bacteria without killing the good bacteria. 

“One of the things that we’re looking into, actively working on, is integrating these bacteriophages with some of these menstrual products to both detect and get rid of infections,” she said.

That research is already underway and it has the potential to reach all sorts of products, not just these tablets.

Hosseinidoust said as a researcher, finding such a big gap in work towards innovation in menstrual products was like discovering a gold mine.

“But at the same time, as a woman, as a menstruating person, you think, ‘really?’” she said.