Rivers Find an Unlikely Savior from Pollution in Tampons

Given their excellent absorption capability, tampons have proven highly efficient in detecting pollution of storm water sewers and rivers.

According to Wired, researches at University of Sheffield are using tampons in sewers to trap compounds that glow in the dark. These compounds, called optical brighteners, are present in detergents. A storm sewer contamination with sewerage is bound to contain optical brighteners, which tampons can collect. When observed under UV light, such tampons glow due to the brighteners, revealing contamination.

"Often the only way to be sure a house is misconnected is through a dye test - putting dye down a sink or toilet and seeing where the coloured water appears in the sewer. It's clearly impractical for water companies to do this for all the households they supply, but by working back from where pollution is identified and narrowing it down to a particular section of the network, the final step of identifying the source then becomes feasible," said David Lerner, who led the study.

Besides cheaper than using scopes or other technology-intensive methods, tampons are also highly sensitive at picking up contamination, researchers found. Tests showed that tampons could pick up brighteners in just five seconds from water source 300 times more dilute than concentrations in surface water pipes. Additionally, they can also be used by residents to determine contamination in their community with ease.

"The main difficulty with detecting sewage pollution by searching for optical brighteners is finding cotton that does not already contain these chemicals. That's why tampons, being explicitly untreated, provide such a neat solution. Our new method may be unconventional - but it's cheap and it works," Lerner said.