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Materials science

Sustainable low-cost menstrual hygiene products

Nature Reviews Bioengineering volume 1, page 886 (2023)Cite this article

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Menstrual hygiene products are essentials that should be accessible to all people who have menstrual periods. However, an estimated 500 million menstruators worldwide lack access to appropriate menstrual pads, often owing to the lack of local technologies for affordable production and the challenge of finding biodegradable and environmentally friendly materials at scale.

Sisal is a robust, drought-tolerant plant, rich in cellulose fibres, that has been typically used for making ropes and rediscovered by the team as an absorptive material. The team applied a green chemistry approach, using mild delignification with peroxyformic acid to separate cellulose microfibres from lignin in the sisal succulent leaves. This was followed by mechanical fluffing of the fibrous mass to increase affinity for water and porosity. “The process is simple and can be performed by local facilities,” explains Prakash. “The resulting sisal absorbent microfibres outperform cotton from commercially available menstrual pads, showing water absorption equivalent to 15.5 grams per gram of material.”

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  1. Nature Reviews Bioengineering https://www.nature.com/natrevbioeng/

    Nesma El-Sayed Ibrahim

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  1. Nesma El-Sayed Ibrahim
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Correspondence to Nesma El-Sayed Ibrahim.

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Ibrahim, N.ES. Sustainable low-cost menstrual hygiene products. Nat Rev Bioeng 1, 886 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44222-023-00147-0

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