PROPHYLACTICS: A Burst of Controversy

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Condoms may have proliferated lately, but not all of them are created equal. So says the March issue of Consumer Reports. Investigators checked 40 brands and 16,000 individual condoms for leakage and strength. When the prophylactics were filled with ten ounces of water, the test used by the U.S. Government, all brands managed to pass. But researchers got different results when they filled condoms with several quarts of air, the standard required by such countries as Denmark and Canada. Two types of condoms, LifeStyles Extra Strength with Nonoxynol-9 (a spermicide) and LifeStyles Nuda Plus, flunked the test 10% of the time. Consumer Reports labeled many of the samples "grossly defective." A spokesman for their manufacturer, Ansell Inc. of Dothan, Ala., declared, "Consumer Reports does not understand condoms." As for the Nonoxynol-9 product, the company said that the magazine's testers were using condoms that Ansell had voluntarily recalled because of defects.