Always Maxi Pads: 13 Materials, Fully Listed, and Mostly Plastic
Credit for the disclosure. The honest read is that a pad is a plastic product with a pulp core.
Always now publishes its full material list, and the current Maxi is fragrance-free, both real improvements worth saying plainly. Read the list and the picture is simple: a wood-pulp and rayon core wrapped in polyethylene and polypropylene, with wicking coatings and an opacity pigment. Nothing here is a five-alarm chemical. What it is, is plastic against your skin for hours, which is a comfort and environmental question more than a toxicity one.
The label, flagged
Cellulose
absorbent pulp
Polyester
RayonCAUTION
Two real but bounded concerns: it carries the dioxin-bleaching history, and very high-absorbency synthetic-fiber tampons drove the 1980 toxic shock epidemic. Today's viscose is far safer, and TSS is rare and tied to absorbency and wear time, not the fiber alone.
PolyethyleneACTUALLY FINE
On acute health these are inert polymers with low toxicity, and the 'plastic in your pad is poisoning you' framing overshoots. The genuine costs are environmental (huge lifetime waste) and comfort (heat and moisture), with microplastic shedding an emerging, not-yet-proven, question. We clear the acute-health scare and name the real cost.
PolypropyleneACTUALLY FINE
On acute health these are inert polymers with low toxicity, and the 'plastic in your pad is poisoning you' framing overshoots. The genuine costs are environmental (huge lifetime waste) and comfort (heat and moisture), with microplastic shedding an emerging, not-yet-proven, question. We clear the acute-health scare and name the real cost.
Hot Melt Adhesive
Titanium DioxideAVOID
Banned as a food additive across the EU in 2022 over genotoxicity its own scientists couldn’t rule out, and it’s a pure whitening pigment you partly swallow with every brush. Still legal here.
opacity pigment
Glycerin
wicking coating
PEG Hydrogenated Castor Oil Trilaurate
wicking coating
Source: Always official materials page. View label. Tap any flagged ingredient for the evidence.
What to use instead
The fix isn’t complicated: a fragrance-free or fully-disclosed alternative, with the ingredients flagged on this label designed out, closes these gaps at once. We pick the ones worth your money.
Shop organic cotton pads →Editorial analysis of the publicly listed label and regulatory/peer-reviewed sources. Not medical advice, not affiliated with the brand. Verdicts are evidence-graded, we flag what the data flags and clear what it clears.