A Person Has Been Corrected After Claiming Women Only Use 7 Tampons A Period Cycle And They Should Stop "Whining" About The Costs

A comment from a Facebook user has been heavily criticized online because the user claimed women only use 7 tampons per period cycle, and only require 90 tampons "max" per year.

The commenter asserts a series of false and flagrant claims about women and period products in an effort to tell women to "stop whining" about the cost of tampons. "This isn't a first world problem," they wrote.

The screenshot appears to have been shared by the Facebook group PinkNews, where 28-year-old Ash of Galway, Ireland, told BuzzFeed News she first saw it. She then shared it on Twitter, where it's gone viral.

BuzzFeed News has reached out to PinkNews.

Ash said she was in "total disbelief" when she came across the comment "that someone could be so wrong, so confident in their wrongness, and so condescending to boot."

"So, the average period is between 10-35 ml of blood, each tampon holds about 5 ml, so 7 tampons per cycle," the user wrote. "Lets be generous and say 10 for those ladies with an extra juicy uterine lining. 9 periods per year = 90 tampons max."

"Cut down on your starbucks venti frapps and stop whining," they concluded their comment.

While the user's name has been blurred, Ash said she is "certain it was a cis man" who shared these loose statistics. "No person who menstruates would say such things," she added.

Others online, many of them women, were profoundly confused and angered by the person's calculations.

The assertions made in the comment are wrong (duh). And, according to some experts and advocates, they're problematic.

Every woman's period cycle is different. On average, adults should expect at least 9 periods a year, and are expected to lose an average of 80 ml of blood per cycle. Heavier periods could cause a woman to lose more than 80 ml, and extend a period to 7 days or longer.

Additionally, Claire Coder, the founder and CEO of Aunt Flow, a company that sells menstrual products to schools and offices, told BuzzFeed News her individual studies on the subject have found that women require "a minimum of 21 tampons per cycle."

"Having 7 tampons on a regular menstrual cycle is false," she said, directly rebuking the person's first claim. "You are only supposed to have a tampon in for a maximum of 8 hours, so that would mean you would only have one in a day which doesn't make sense."

"Having a tampon in for longer than 8 hours puts the menstruator at risk for TSS (toxic shock syndrome)," Coder went on. "Since there are 24 hours in a day and you are only supposed to wear a tampon for a max of 8 hours, you would need at least 3 tampons a day during the menstrual cycle, which would be a minimum of 21 tampons per cycle."

She went on to say that an average pack of 24 tampons could cost a woman $10 plus tax. "So the average menstruator is spending at least $120 a year on tampons."

Coder adds that while these false claims are absurd and may be an exception, she takes this issue very seriously.

"It is problematic that these claims are circulating because someone may believe they are true. Imagine being a young girl trying to find resources about a period online; this could be the first thing that comes up in search results," she said.

Ash told BuzzFeed News that these types of opinions are detrimental to the financially disadvantaged.

"People living in poverty typically can't afford to buy in bulk. They also might have no access to a computer or a fixed address," she said.