photo #8829338

So your hair is clean and smelling of roses, but what’s going on down below? Lysol was a best-seller as a “feminine hygiene” product, but many people don’t realize that “feminine hygiene” was often used as a euphemism for contraception before birth control was legalized in the US in 1965. Despite ads describing Lysol as “safe and gentle,” it was anything but. The chemical ingredients damaged the uterine lining and by 1911 doctors had recorded 193 Lysol poisonings and 5 deaths from its use as a contraceptive. The worst part? It wasn’t even effective at preventing pregnancy—in one 1933 study, 250 of 507 women using Lysol still ended up pregnant.