Fragrance in Pads: 14 Peer-Reviewed Studies, and What They Actually Prove
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Every study below is peer reviewed and listed with its PubMed ID so you can look it up yourself. Nothing here is our opinion. We tell you at the end what this evidence does not prove, because that matters as much as what it does.
The thing nobody tells you about a scented pad
A pad is not regulated like a cosmetic. In most markets, including ours, a sanitary pad does not have to list its ingredients. Your face cream does. Your shampoo does. The thing that sits against the most permeable tissue on your body for five days a month does not.
So when a pack says "fresh scent" or "floral," that is the entire disclosure. You are not told what the scent is made of. Researchers have gone and found out anyway, and this is what they published.
The studies
1. Scented pads leach known allergens at levels that would legally require labelling, and do not label them
PMID: 36067853. Quantitative risk assessment of allergens leaching from menstrual hygiene products. Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, 2022.
Researchers took four well-documented skin sensitizers found leaching from five different scented menstrual products, including tampons and sanitary pads, and ran a formal risk assessment on them. The four were alpha-isomethyl ionone, benzyl salicylate, hexyl cinnamaldehyde and heliotropine. Benzyl salicylate came out at 11.03 micrograms per gram. Under EU cosmetic regulation, anything above 10 micrograms per gram legally has to be declared on the label. None of the sensitizers they identified appeared anywhere on the packaging. The authors also make the point that vaginal mucosa does not have the barrier function skin has, so a sensitizer that would sit on your forearm can cross here.
This is the single most important paper on the list. It is not saying fragrance gives you a disease. It is saying you are being exposed to allergens that would be labelled in a cosmetic, with zero disclosure.
2. Most pads and liners on the shelf contain at least one known contact allergen
PMID: 41026529. Potential Allergens in Feminine Hygiene Products. Journal of Cutaneous Medicine and Surgery, 2025.
The team analysed 59 pantiliners and 111 maxi pads and identified 139 unique compounds. Pantiliners averaged 8.4 compounds each, maxi pads 11. Fragrances appeared in over 10% of products, alongside adhesives in 88%, metallic pigments in 81% and PEG compounds in 72%. Out of 170 products, only 11 contained no known allergen at all. The authors concluded that pads and liners routinely contain compounds already linked in the literature to genital allergic contact dermatitis.
3. A systematic review of everything measured in menstrual products
PMID: 37743685. Marroquin J, Kiomourtzoglou MA, Scranton A, Pollack AZ. Chemicals in menstrual products: A systematic review. BJOG, 2024;131(5):655-664.
This is the closest thing to a definitive overview. The authors screened studies since 2013 measuring chemicals in tampons, pads and liners. They found phthalates, volatile organic compounds, parabens, environmental phenols, fragrance chemicals, and dioxins across the category. Fragrance chemicals specifically were measured in only two of the studies they could find, and those studies reported sensitizing allergens present in scented products. Note that number: two. The literature on fragrance in pads is thin, and the review says so.
4. Benzene in 83% of feminine hygiene products tested
PMID: 32866732. Lin N, Ding N, Meza-Wilson E, et al. Volatile organic compounds in feminine hygiene products sold in the US market: A survey of products and health risks. Environment International, 2020;144:105740.
Seventy-nine commercially available products were analysed, including pads, tampons, wipes, washes, sprays and powders. Benzene, a recognised carcinogen, was detected in 83% of products, up to 3,604 nanograms per gram. 1,4-dioxane was in 50%, up to 24,354 nanograms per gram. Washes, sprays and powders carried the highest total VOC load. Menstrual pads produced hazard ratios up to 11 in their screening model.
Read the hazard ratio carefully. It is a conservative screening estimate built on worst-case exposure assumptions, not a measurement of anyone getting sick. It flags a product for further study. It does not diagnose harm.
5. The fragrance compounds themselves, identified by name
PMID: 40239564. Chemical characterization of menstrual and intimate care products: An extractables and leachables investigation. Environment International, 2025.
When the researchers ran non-targeted analysis, the largest unidentified peaks turned out to be fragrance compounds: linalool, eucalyptol and benzyl acetate. Others traced back to the adhesives in the pad. Linalool matters here because its oxidation products, linalool hydroperoxides, are among the most common fragrance sensitizers found in patch-testing clinics worldwide.
6. Modelling how much actually gets into you
PMID: 40344599. Estimation of Dermal Exposure to Volatile Organic Compounds from Feminine Hygiene Products: Integrating Measurement Data and Physiologically Based Toxicokinetic Modelling. 2025.
Measured VOC content across five product categories, then modelled where those compounds travel in body tissue after dermal exposure. The authors concluded the exposure is significant enough to warrant both further research and regulatory attention.
7. VOC levels in women, tracked across a full cycle
PMID: 34491105. Feminine Hygiene Products and Volatile Organic Compounds in Reproductive-Aged Women Across the Menstrual Cycle: A Longitudinal Pilot Study. Journal of Women's Health.
Rather than testing products, this one tested women, repeatedly, across the cycle, to see whether product use tracked with VOC levels in the body. It is a pilot, so the sample is small and it is hypothesis-generating rather than conclusive. It is the right kind of study and there needs to be more of it.
8. Phthalates, bisphenols and parabens across the category
PMID: 31945693. Phthalates, bisphenols, parabens, and triclocarban in feminine hygiene products from the United States and their implications for human exposure. Environment International, 2020.
Broadens the picture beyond fragrance. These are endocrine-active compounds, and several of them are carried into products as fragrance fixatives and preservatives rather than as an intentional ingredient in their own right.
9. Contact dermatitis of the vulva, traced directly back to a pad
PMID: 17295694. Williams JD, Frowen KE, Nixon RL. Allergic contact dermatitis from methyldibromo glutaronitrile in a sanitary pad and review of Australian clinic data. Contact Dermatitis, 2007;56(3):164-167.
A 49-year-old nurse with vulval dermatitis. Patch testing was positive to her sanitary pad, to the pad's adhesive, and to methyldibromo glutaronitrile, a biocide in that adhesive. The same paper reviewed 12 years of clinic data and found only 20 cases in 2,837 patients tested, which is 0.7%. So this is real and documented, and it is also rare. Both of those are true.
10. Pad dermatitis is a recognised clinical entity, not a feeling
PMID: 20101351. Wiwanitkit V. Sanitary pad dermatitis. Indian Journal of Dermatology, 2009.
A 38-year-old woman with monthly itching and burning on the perineum at the exact contact site of her pad, presenting as red swollen skin with fluid-filled vesicles. She tested it herself by wearing pads outside her period and got the same reaction, across different manufacturers. Dermatologists have a name for this. That is the point of including it.
11. Formaldehyde exposure through paper-based menstrual products
PMID: 40578626. Formaldehyde Allergic Contact Dermatitis: Evaluation of Paper-Based Menstrual Products as a Potential Route of Exposure. 2025.
Relevant to anyone already formaldehyde-sensitised, which is a large group, since formaldehyde releasers are widespread in personal care.
12. Women who use more vaginal products report more problems
PMID: 29566756. Crann SE, Cunningham S, Albert A, Money DM, O'Doherty KC. Vaginal health and hygiene practices and product use in Canada: a national cross-sectional survey. BMC Women's Health, 2018. 1,435 respondents.
Over 95% of respondents used at least one product in or around the vaginal area. Those who used any product had roughly three times higher odds of reporting an adverse health condition. 80% reported at least one adverse genital symptom in their lifetime.
Now the caveat, and it is a big one. This is cross-sectional, meaning everything was measured at the same moment. It cannot tell you which came first. Women who already have itching, discharge or irritation are exactly the women who go and buy sprays, washes and wipes to fix it. The 3x could be the products causing the symptoms, or the symptoms causing the product purchases, and this study design cannot separate the two. Anyone quoting that number at you without saying this is selling you something.
13. Feminine hygiene products and the vaginal microbiome
PMID: 24009546. Effects of feminine hygiene products on the vaginal mucosal biome. 2013.
A healthy vaginal environment is dominated by Lactobacillus species and sits around pH 4.5. This paper looks at how introduced products shift that. The mechanism is plausible and well described. Applying it specifically to a fragranced pad, which sits outside the vaginal canal, is a step beyond what the study tested.
14. Product use and infection risk beyond douching
PMID: 19170863. Beyond douching: use of feminine hygiene products and STI risk among young women. Journal of Women's Health, 2009.
Extends the older douching literature to the wider product category. The same cross-sectional limitation applies.
What this evidence does not prove
We are going to be straight with you, because the internet on this topic is not.
No study has shown that a fragranced pad causes disease. There is no randomised controlled trial. There will never be one, because you cannot ethically randomise women to a suspected sensitizer for years and wait to see what happens.
What exists is three separate kinds of weaker evidence. Laboratory analyses that find the chemicals are present. Case reports of individual women whose dermatitis was traced to a specific pad. And survey data showing an association between product use and symptoms, which cannot establish the direction of causation.
Hazard ratios and risk estimates in these papers are screening tools. They are built on deliberately conservative worst-case assumptions so that nothing dangerous slips through unexamined. A high hazard ratio means study this properly. It does not mean this harmed someone.
Most women use scented pads and are completely fine. The Australian clinic data found allergy to that particular pad biocide in 0.7% of patients tested. Rare things are still worth knowing about, especially if you are the one it happens to, but rare is rare.
So what is the actual takeaway
Not that fragrance in pads will hurt you. The honest version is narrower and, we think, more damning.
Scented pads contain skin sensitizers at concentrations that would legally require a label if the same product were classified as a cosmetic. They are not classified as a cosmetic, so you are not told. You cannot make an informed choice about something you were never informed about. That is the problem, and it is a regulatory gap, not a conspiracy.
If you have unexplained vulval itching, burning or a rash that keeps coming back around your period, the studies above are a reason to raise fragranced products with your doctor and ask about patch testing. They are not a reason to panic, and they are not a diagnosis. Go and get an actual one.
And if you would rather not add fragrance to that part of your body at all, that is a completely reasonable preference to hold with the evidence as it stands. Unscented pads exist. So do we.
Selesa makes period underwear. We have an obvious interest in you thinking about alternatives to pads, so we have tried to give you the studies with their weaknesses attached rather than only the parts that flatter us. None of the research above tested period underwear, ours or anyone else's, and we are not claiming it prevents anything. This article is information, not medical advice. If something is wrong, see a doctor.
Every PMID is searchable at pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Go and check us.
