Qwerty’s quandry: I spoke with someone who said they use OxiClean and water to make a watery paste to brush their teeth. They said this whitens their teeth. They said it does taste awful but it keeps their teeth looking white. My first thoughts were to ask was this safe. Does it harm the tooth enamel or gums? Can it mess up your dental work? Others said it is the same as peroxide and they brush or gargled 10 mins daily with peroxide. Then I read it can loosen the gums. So what is the truth. Can OxiClean be used to brush your teeth to make them whiter? Is it effective? Safe? Damaging? How often?
The Beauty Brains respond
Let’s take a look at the ingredients in OxyClean.
OxyClean Versatile Stain Removing Powder Ingredients
Sodium Carbonate, Sodium Percarbonate , Alcohols C12-15 Ethoxylated, Silicic Acid disodium salt pentahydrate, Polyacrylic Acid, Fragrance
When Sodium Percarbonate is mixed with water it will release hydrogen peroxide. Hydrogen Peroxide can certainly be used to bleach teeth but if not used properly it can damage your gums.
The problem with peroxide
One important question is how much hydrogen peroxide OxyClean generates. Over the counter oral products use very low levels because the peroxide can come in contact with tissue (rather than just tooth enamel) and cause damage. Dentists can use higher levels because they can more carefully control the application. We assume that OxyClean may be generating a level that is fine for cleaning purposes but that is far higher than what’s safe for contact with oral mucosa.
Other Oxy-concerns
The ingredients are not necessarily cosmetic or food grade so they are not established as safe for use in the mouth, especially in the case of accidental ingestion. There are far far different standards for household cleaning products versus cosmetic & dental products.
The Beauty Brains bottom line
Don’t by an Oxy-Moron. Therefore there’s no reason to take the risk and use a product like this when so many safer alternatives are available. (A tip of the hat to Alchemist for help on this post!)
Image credit: http://farm3.staticflickr.com/
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“… cleaning products VERSES cosmetic & dental products …” Seriously? Come on, who writes this stuff? There are so many grammatical errors throughout this site I barely comment on them or I’d be editing all day. But this one is just… sloppy.
It’s versus. Not verses.
Sorry Jeff but sometimes the dictation software we use to write posts creates errors that don’t get caught in the editing process. Thanks.
I am not even sure I trust the dentists to do the teeth whitening. They say they can carefully control the application, but I am still really skeptical that the H2O2 itself cannot do long term damage to the enamel – and if one wants to be cynical – more business for them in the future in terms of cavities. After all this is still a profession that gives patients high dose fluoride treatments when the ex-head of the EPA under Clinton stated that when they did their internal testing, there was no more potent carcinogen than fluoride, and informed governments around the world are starting to remove it from the water supply.
@Michelle: I’d love if you could share a link to a reference that documents what you said about the ex-head of the EPA and about other governments removing fluoride from their water supplies. According to all the latests science (see this link for studies and details: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/fluoridated-water) there is no credible link between fluoridated water and cancer in humans.
Actually, there were significant numbers of animal studies that were conducted by the EPA where scientists have said that the government intentionally downgraded all the findings by pathologists so they could issue reports saying it was safe. If you actually read some of the references on the link you put above, you will notice that many of the sources talk about panels “re-reviewing” other studies saying that on re-review there was no problem – yet no clinical data or specific rationale provided. Many of the most problematic studies are ignored as if they do not exist. Others are metanalyses of various county water supplies, which any scientist can tell you can be manipulated based one what counties one picks etc. These studies also are pretty worthless when one considers the mobility of people and 66% of Americans with fluoride, which now means most will be exposed to the carcinogen even if they are not living near a fluoridated water supply now.
There are actually many prominent EPA whistleblowers who have come forward. One was vice president of the EPA’s employee’s union (my bad, I mistakenly remembered him as head of the EPA) Dr. William Hirzy, Dr. Robert Carton, and Dr. William Marcus former chief toxicologist for the EPA’s Office of Drinking Water. The latter was literally FIRED for simply presenting the truth on fluoride and won a lawsuit on wrongful termination. I heard him in an interview several years ago saying that in animal models in all the subjects they had tested, they had never found ANYTHING that was more carcinogenic than fluoride. Here is an interview with Dr. Hirzy himself in Congress – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViNNIwmzTzI. I urge anyone to watch this. The EPA’s union itself opposes fluoridation.
Ultimately in the scientific community the only “credible” evidence of harm is a randomized double blinded placebo controlled study. These are required for pharmaceutical manufacturers but has never been required of flouride, which back in the 1940s was considered a toxic waste product. Any chemist will tell you it is one of the most reactive substances known, and is not used in any normal body processes (unlike chlorine and most elements commonly present in the body). People use animal studies when the real studies are not done, and pharmaceuticals with more modest carcinogenic activity have been pulled with “no credible evidence” just based on the animal studies. The real question is what “credible evidence” – i.e. randomized PROSPECTIVE study- shows it is safe. There are absolutely none. Pharmaceuticals require them, why not flouride when we are involuntarily medicated?
Other links:
http://www.scionofzion.com/fluoride.htm
http://www.doctoryourself.com/carton.html
http://skepticalvegan.com/2012/07/11/fluoride-cancer-quackery/
http://1stholistic.com/reading/health-fluoride-causes-cancer.htm
Thanks for the thoughtful comments. I guess the debate rages on… here some links from the skeptical community that present the other point of view:
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4058
http://www.quackwatch.com/03HealthPromotion/fluoride.html
I’ve recently read that exposure fluoride lowers your intelligence. That concerns me more than cancer.
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