A UNLV law student is pushing to require companies selling feminine hygiene products in Nevada to list specific ingredients on the label that have been identified as carcinogenic, linked to neurotoxicity, toxic to reproductive organs or designated as a “priority pollutant” in Nevada water.

The bill, AB169, was presented Tuesday during a Senate Health and Human Services Committee hearing. If passed, the policy would take effect on Jan 1, 2025, but allow for some exemptions for small packaging. It would also require manufacturers to list harmful chemicals on their websites.

“The products come in contact with this reproductive tissue, which is made up of mucous membranes,” said Kelsey Lamph, the law student who presented the bill. “Substances come in contact with these organs and do not go through the body's typical elimination and metabolic processes.”

Lamph said she is a childhood leukemia survivor and that her mother is a thyroid cancer survivor and her great-grandmother was a breast cancer survivor. She presented the measure with Assemblywoman Michelle Gorelow (D-Las Vegas), the bill’s primary sponsor.

“I deeply understand how illness can disrupt and devastate lives,” Lamph said.

The policy passed out of the Assembly last month with all Democrats voting yes and all but two Republicans voting no. Opponents noted that if the policy passes, feminine hygiene products would become part of a group of items protected by existing law that makes a failure to list certain ingredients a misdemeanor, upward to a category D felony.

The article was updated at 3:45 P.M. on 5/18/2023 to correct the spelling of Kelsey Lamph's name.