thumb|Cotton pads
thumb|180px|Cotton balls
Cotton pads are pads made of cotton which are used for medical or cosmetic purposes. For medical purposes, cotton pads are used to stop or prevent bleeding from minor punctures such as injections or venipuncture. They may be secured in place with tape. Cotton pads are also used in the application and the removal of makeup. was used at least as early as 589 AD in China. Cotton balls have been used for applying gold leaf since at least as far back as 1801. An artists' manual from that year recommends using a "squirrel's tail, or cotton ball" to press the gold leaf into place. There is some evidence that they were being mass produced as far back as 1816, namely an advertisement taken out of the New York Evening Post by Palmer, Nichols & Co. for many different kinds of fabric and products made of cotton which lists "Cotton Balls" as an item for sale. In 1891 The Laredo Times ran a story about women who put cotton balls in their cheeks to make themselves appear less thin. An 1898 patent by Jerome B. Dillon for a new type of umbilical bandage used an "antiseptic, absorbent cotton pad" to carry out its function.
In 1937, Joseph A. Voss invented a machine which unraveled rolls of cotton and cut them at a fixed interval into cotton pads, starting the widespread consumption of cotton balls and pads. Companies producing cotton balls took out ads in newspapers as early as 1948 to promote their uses to the public. Around this time, there was industry concern that sanitary products using nylon, labeled as cotton balls, were going to crowd out cotton balls actually containing cotton, harming cotton-exporting regions.
In 2015, , a supermarket and chain store trade magazine, estimated that combined sales of cotton balls and pads in the United States were US$177.7 million for the year 2014, down from US$343.1 million in 1999. The change could be due to increases of sales of cheaper store brands: in 1999, only 50.1% of sold cotton balls were store branded, and Cotton Cloud (Wabbit, Inc.).