News of a dental hygiene nightmare is trending this week after dental hygienists reported finding tiny specks of plastic lodged in the gums of their patients.
Toothpaste brand Crest has come under fire for its use of these flecks of polyethylene, advertised as "microbeads," which allegedly pose a possible a threat to both the health of its users as well as the environment. According to the Washington Post, the tiny beads have been been approved by the FDA but are raising concerns among dentists and environmentalists alike, as they neither biodegrade nor disintegrate. And they're allegedly becoming lodged deep in the gums of many users, according to multiple reports.
Several months ago, dental hygienist Trish Walraven wrote a blog criticizing the use of polyethylene in toothpaste on the blog Dental Buzz. "The gum channel is called a sulcus, and it’s where diseases like gingivitis get their start," she writes. "A healthy sulcus is no deeper than about 3 millimeters, so when you have hundreds of pieces of plastic being scrubbed into your gums each day that are even smaller than a millimeter, many of them are getting trapped." She adds that, though there's no long term evidence that these flecks cause gum problems, she and other hygienists are concerned about the implications of these findings.
For their part, Crest's parent company Procter & Gamble claim that they intent to pull their products with microbeads from the market.
"Today, some of P&G's most popular products do not contain microbeads including Crest Whitening + Scope, Crest Baking Soda Peroxide, Crest Extra Whitening, Crest Cavity, and Crest Tartar + Whitening," said Procter & Gamble in a statement. "In those that do, P&G has begun removing them. In fact, the majority of Crest's product volume will be microbead-free by March 2015. Crest will complete removal process by March of 2016."
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