In the era of sweeping industry reshuffle, who can rebuild the shattered trust in sanitary napkins?

The biggest lesson that sanitary napkins bring to all industries is that "racing to the bottom does not deserve to win". When the entire industry kept making sanitary napkins shorter and shorter within the legal deviation of ±4%, no one expected that a ruler worth a few dollars in consumers' hands would overturn all this.

‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍01 A Ruler Measures the Underlying Scandal of an Entire Industry

The starting point of the domino effect is a ruler.

In November 2024, a netizen took a ruler to measure the sanitary napkin he just bought: the package marked 240mm, but the actual length was only about 230mm. Where did the missing 10 millimeters go?

This post was like a spark falling into a haystack. More and more people went home to measure their sanitary napkins, and the results sent a chill down the entire industry's spine — almost all brands produced products that were shorter than the marked length, none longer. Red Star Capital Bureau tested the 240mm daily-use models of 7 brands, 5 of them had actual lengths shorter than the nominal value, one model of ABC had a deviation of 6mm, and the maximum gap between the inner absorbent layer and the nominal length on the outer package even reached 66mm; for sanitary napkins marked 350mm, the actual water-absorbing part was only 300mm.

Sofy, Whisper, Kotex, Space7, Ladycare, Besuper, babycare, these national brands that occupy supermarket shelves were all involved in the condemnation of "cutting corners" overnight.

What really escalated the incident from a "quality dispute" to a "brand public relations disaster" was the "historic" response from ABC's customer service: "There are indeed deviations in sanitary napkins produced by machines... if you can't accept it, you can choose not to buy it."

Arrogance ignited public opinion. Although the brand apologized twice, its founder Deng Jingheng personally bowed to the public and promised that all product lines would achieve "zero negative deviation from the national standard" in March 2025, the rift in trust could no longer be mended. Consumers' mentality completely collapsed: some people called for Lei Jun to enter the market to make sanitary napkins, the related topic on Weibo recorded over 51 million views, some people "returned to simplicity" to make homemade sanitary napkins, and more people flocked to "medical device numbered products" — the search popularity of "medical sanitary napkin with medical device number" on Taobao surged by 3920% in a single week.

02 Behind Formaldehyde Compliance: Sanitary Napkins Follow the Same Standard as Curtains

The length issue is just the trigger. What really made the sanitary napkin topic stay in the public spotlight continuously is the continuous decline of safety indicators — and formaldehyde is the most glaring one among them.

Many people do not know that "formaldehyde detected in sanitary napkins" is not new news. As early as 2017, Consumer Reports sampled 8 mainstream sanitary napkins on the market, and the results showed that formaldehyde was detected in all 8 products, ABC had a relatively high formaldehyde content, but none exceeded the old national standard limit of ≤75mg/kg at that time. The warning from the engineer of Guangzhou Fiber Product Testing Research Institute, the testing party, still rings in our ears: "Even low-dose formaldehyde may cause menstrual disorders in women with long-term exposure."

The absurdity of the problem lies in the standard itself: The old national standard GB/T 8939-2018 sets the pH range for sanitary napkins at 4.0-9.0, which is exactly the same as that of "Class C textiles", namely curtains and outerwear.

Thus, a thought-provoking question spread all over the internet: "So the safety of women's private parts is only worthy of the same level as curtains?"

The natural environment of women's private parts is weakly acidic with a pH of 3.5-5.5. A slightly alkaline sanitary napkin sticks to the skin for 8 hours a day, 7 days a month, through about 400 menstrual cycles, totaling 4000 pieces — anyone who calculates this figure will fall silent.

To be objective, most regular products are "qualified" under the old national standard. The 2025 315 test by Huangjia Laboratory showed that the pH values of 15 products were all in the safe range of 5.3-6.1. However, the gap between "qualified" and "reassuring" is precisely caused by the lag of standards. The formaldehyde limit of 75mg/kg has become a "legal living space" for inferior upstream adhesives, recycled cotton pulp and chemical whitening processes.

03 The Old Problems Are Not Gone, New Ones Come

The story is far from over. The real "year of collective collapse" is a series of consecutive thunderstorms from the second half of 2024 to 2025: first, ABC was questioned again due to the design defect of its "bikini-style sleeping pants"; then the 2025 CCTV 3·15 Gala uncovered a more shocking scene — enterprises such as Liangshan Xixi Paper Products refurbished and resold defective sanitary napkins and leftover materials, mixed them into the market, and brands such as Free and Sofy were all involved in the public opinion vortex due to the outflow of defective materials.

In August 2026, the disinfection-grade sanitary napkin "Tao Tao Oxygen Cotton" (produced by Guilin Jieling Industrial, endorsed by Yang Zi) was exposed to have insect bodies and suspected insect eggs after unpacking. Ironically, this product highlights the selling point of "national standard disinfection grade", claiming that its disinfection level is the same as that of infusion tubes. The final regulatory sampling inspection result was qualified and the enterprise had no illegal acts, but when a brand that takes "eliminating microbial risks" as its selling point cannot give a convincing explanation for even the visible insect bodies in real usage scenarios, the rift in trust can no longer be repaired.

Under the panic, what consumers want to buy is no longer just a sanitary napkin, but a sense of security in the era of declining trust. In October 2026, Dong Yuhui's custom sanitary napkins were "sold out in seconds for 300,000 orders" in the live stream. Consumers voted by snapping up the products, and what they voted for was not the brand, but the "verifiable test report".

04 Standard Revolution: From "Same Standard as Curtains" to "Same Standard as Baby Products"

The other side of the crisis is the rapid acceleration of standard upgrading.

The most solid achievement of the public opinion storm is the successive implementation of two new national standards:

The first line of defense — GB 15979-2024 Hygienic Requirements for Disposable Sanitary Products (mandatory national standard, implemented on July 1, 2025, a major upgrade after 22 years): the formaldehyde limit was reduced from ≤75mg/kg to ≤30mg/kg, migratable fluorescent substances are required to be "not detected", the microbial index is tightened to ≤200CFU/g, and fungi in disinfection-grade products "shall not be detected".

The second line of defense — GB/T 8939-2025 Sanitary Napkins (Panty Liners) (approved and released on December 31, 2025, implemented on January 1, 2027): The formaldehyde limit is further reduced sharply to ≤6.0mg/kg, which is completely aligned with the national standard for baby diapers, more than 92% tighter than the old standard; the pH value is narrowed to 4.0-7.5; the total length deviation is tightened to ≥-2.0%, which literally ends the "unspoken rule of negative deviation"; three new chemical safety indicators are added: phthalates (total amount ≤0.1%), heavy metals (lead ≤10mg/kg, etc.), and decomposable carcinogenic aromatic amine dyes (≤20mg/kg); in terms of usage experience, new indicators of rewet amount ≤3.0g and absorption speed ≤50 seconds are added.

In other words, after New Year's Day 2027, the three low-cost paths that the industry used to rely on — "recycled cotton pulp", "chemical whitening" and "inferior adhesive" — will be completely blocked at the national standard level. The "medical care grade" group standard that was once hyped everywhere is even inferior to the current safety bottom line of ordinary-grade sanitary napkins. Those "safety level" marketing terms that charge tens of thousands of yuan for certification fees and have no official basis (such as the pseudo-concept of "medical-grade sanitary napkins") are also completely deprived of their foundation.

05 The Countdown Starts: Who Can Survive This Round of Shuffling

The power of the new national standard does not lie in its written content, but in its elimination effect.

Verification tests conducted by industry institutions on 205 commercially available products have already revealed the cruel gap: no migratable fluorescent substances were detected in all 205 products, but formaldehyde was still detected in 1 product with a content of 14mg/kg. This product, which was "qualified" according to the old standard, will be directly eliminated under the new standard.

This is exactly the true portrayal of the shuffling logic: Once the new standard is implemented, the 14mg/kg line is the life-and-death line. Industry insiders participating in the standard revision revealed that the current market quality is severely polarized: the core safety indicators of leading brands are stable, while small and medium manufacturers are still using refurbished materials and producing at the bottom line of the old standard; the industry sampling pass rate in 2024 was 95%, but the 5% unqualified products and a large number of products that "just passed the line" are concentrated in the low-price production capacity zone.

The responses of leading brands also prove that "the standard is only the bottom line, not the ceiling": some brands control the length deviation accuracy to be 3 times stricter than the national standard, achieve "not detected" level of formaldehyde, set internal control standards for microorganisms 6 times higher than the national standard, and track 100% of defective products by crushing them in the factory; some new consumer brands use 144 testing procedures and the record of full qualification in sampling inspections across multiple regions to turn "traceability" into their core competitiveness.

Our industrial judgment from Liujiu Business Review is:

First, January 1, 2027 is not an "upgrade day", but a "clear-out day". The 92% reduction of formaldehyde from 75mg/kg to 6.0mg/kg is a test of testing capabilities for first-tier brands, but a life-and-death cost barrier for small white-label factories — the new tests for phthalates, heavy metals and carcinogenic dyes mean that a complete laboratory and raw material traceability system, with a threshold of hundreds of thousands to millions of yuan, will block countless production capacities that "just meet the bottom line of the old standard". In the previous year, market regulatory authorities in many regions have carried out carpet-like inspections on sanitary napkins, removed problematic products from shelves, and the prelude to elimination has already begun.

Second, the beneficiaries of the shuffling are not the "most expensive brands", but the "most transparent brands". From consumers measuring the length with a ruler in 2024 to 300,000 orders being sold out in seconds for the test report in 2026, the underlying logic of consumer decision-making has been rewritten: concepts created by brand marketing (medical grade, disinfection grade, special care grade) are fading, while the verifiability of sampling records, execution standard numbers and third-party tests is increasing in value.

Third, the biggest lesson that the formaldehyde incident leaves to the industry is that "there are no winners in bottom-line competition". When the entire industry regards the ±4% deviation as a "legal negative deviation", no one expects that a ruler worth a few dollars in consumers' hands will overturn all this. Standards can be late, but the awakening of consumers will not.

The lesson of a single sanitary napkin is also a mirror for China's entire new consumer industry: the era of surviving by exploiting information gaps and lowering the bottom line is counting down.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Liujiu Finance" (ID: liujiucaijing69), author: Kai Kai, published with authorization from 36Kr.