The Politics of Diapers

By the Mothering Staff
Issue 116, January - February 2003

1961 Proctor and Gamble (P&G) introduces Pampers.

1971 Pennsylvania Boy Scouts conducting a highway cleanup campaign report that the largest single source of litter is the disposable diaper. Disposable diapers contribute 171,000 dry weight tons of waste to be processed by US sewage systems. (M. A. Shapiro, Preliminary Study of the Environmental Impacts from Processing and Disposal of Diapers)

1975, February In comparing the effectiveness of several brands of disposable diapers, Consumer Reports notes that trees are cut down in their manufacture, enteric (intestinal) viruses and live polio viruses from vaccines have been found in feces in disposable diapers removed from "sanitary" landfills, flushing diapers can ruin septic tanks and plumbing lines and damage sewage-treatment plants, and only commercial incinerators can safely burn disposables.

1975, July Wildlife-management personnel complain of the increasing presence of throwaway diapers improperly disposed of in parks and preservation areas. In North Carolina, a marine biologist reports that raw sewage spilling from pipes clogged with disposable diapers is killing fish. (The Sentinel, Winston-Salem, July 31, 1975)

1975 "The presence of viruses in untreated human fecal matter in solid waste disposal sites originates largely from the increased, wide-spread use of disposable diapers, which often send feces to landfill sites rather than to the sewage plant. Small children and babies excrete large numbers of enteric viruses in their feces, and viruses from landfill sites might be leached out and contaminate underground water supplies." (Baylor College of Medicine)

1975 The EPA warns that rainwater washing through dumps may carry viruses-which can live in compacted solid waste for up to two weeks-into underground streams, and from there into public and private water supplies. Improved sanitation during this century has made rare the diseases associated with direct contact with raw sewage: hepatitis A, shigella, salmonellosis, amebiasis, and typhoid. However, the University of Oregon Survival Center notes that outbreaks of shigella, salmonellosis, and hepatitis A are now more common in hospitals and daycare centers. The World Health Organization has called for an end to the inclusion of urine and fecal matter in solid waste.

1978 The Office of Appropriate Technology of Lane County, Oregon, takes three random samplings from a sanitary landfill and finds that disposable diapers comprise 16 percent, 26 percent, and 32 percent of the garbage extracted in each sample.

1979 Pediatrician Dr. Fred C. Weiner, of Montreal, Canada, studies one-month-old babies brought to a well-baby clinic for a period of one year and finds that disposables cause more frequent and more severe diaper rash. He advises limiting their use. (Journal of Pediatrics 95, September 1979)

1979 Oregon Senator Mary M. Burrows co-authors the state's first proposed bill to ban the sale of disposables.

1981 Testimony on behalf of HB3047 and HB2838, the Disposable Diaper Ban Bill, before the Oregon House Energy and Environment Committee of the Legislative Assembly: "Valuable wood pulp goes into the manufacture of close to ten billion diapers annually. This represents in excess of 800,000,000 pounds of paper. All of this paper is used only once and thrown away. It cannot be recycled. Yet, the timber industry doesn't have enough allowable cut at the same time that the public is increasing its use of recreational timberland and is clamoring for more. We cannot afford to sink our valuable and diminishing natural resources into throwaway diapers. Industry sources claim that disposable diapers require less energy than rewashing reusable (cloth) diapers. These claims must be rejected out-of-hand. None of these energy use figures include the costs of sewage treatment or solid waste hauling and management, to say nothing of long-term costs of directing natural resources from other uses."

1986 "Over 40 percent of newborns in US hospitals are diapered in Ultra Pampers. In addition, the diaper has received a highly favorable response from pediatricians. In fact, within the first five months of introduction, over 25 percent of your colleagues reported that they had recommended Ultra Pampers to parents of diaper-age children." ("Dear Doctor," a brochure enclosed in Proctor and Gamble's Medigram, November 7, 1986)

1987 US disposable diaper revenues total $3.2 billion. 82,000 tons of plastic and 1.3 million tons of wood pulp-about a quarter of a million trees-are consumed annually in the production of disposable diapers.

1987 The Empire State Consumer Association petitions the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, and the New York State Attorney General's office to prohibit the sale of synthetic super-absorbent disposable diapers and adult incontinence pads. The chemicals used in synthetic super-absorbent products contain sodium polyacrylate, cross-linked with polymers to create super-absorbent components. These chemicals can cause severe skin infections and, rarely, toxic shock syndrome.