Daily Fluoride Toothpaste

Details

A plain daily toothpaste carrying the one thing in oral care with decades of evidence behind it. Everything else in the tube is there to carry it. Fourteen ingredients, all below with percentages. The cheat in toothpaste is the fluoride figure itself, and it hides in two places. The first is the arithmetic. A pack can print a salt percentage or a ppm figure, and they are not the same number. Sodium fluoride is NaF, molar mass 41.99, of which fluorine is 19.00, so fluoride is 45.25 percent of it by mass. This tube carries 0.32 percent sodium fluoride, and 0.32 times 0.4525 is 0.145 percent, which is 1450 ppm fluoride ion. Both numbers are on the pack and the multiplication is here so you can check one against the other. The second is the word soluble. Fluoride only works if it is free in the mouth, and the amount dosed at the mixer is not the amount available at the end of two years on a shelf. 1450 ppm here is the total soluble fluoride figure measured at end of shelf life, tested by the methods in IS 6356. That is the number that matters and it is the one the category tends not to distinguish. This is also why the base is hydrated silica and not calcium carbonate: calcium binds free fluoride ion and takes it out of play, which is why chalk-based pastes that do carry fluoride use sodium monofluorophosphate instead, where the fluorine is locked in a phosphate group until enzymes in the mouth release it. Our herbal tube uses calcium carbonate and carries no fluoride at all, and those two facts are related. The third thing worth naming is the foam. Sodium lauryl sulphate is in most tubes because it makes the meringue that people read as cleaning, and it is also strongly associated with recurrent mouth ulcers. It is out. What replaced it is sodium cocoyl glutamate at 1.0 percent, and it foams noticeably less, which is the trade and the reason SLS is still nearly everywhere.

• Full INCI, in descending order: Sorbitol, Aqua, Hydrated Silica, Glycerin, Xylitol, Cellulose Gum, Sodium Cocoyl Glutamate, Mentha Piperita (Peppermint) Oil, Sodium Fluoride, Mentha Viridis (Spearmint) Leaf Oil, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice, Sodium Hydroxide, Limonene, Linalool
• With percentages: Sorbitol 35.0, Aqua 30.15, Hydrated Silica 20.0, Glycerin 8.0, Xylitol 3.0, Cellulose Gum 1.0, Sodium Cocoyl Glutamate 1.0, Peppermint Oil 0.9, Sodium Fluoride 0.32, Spearmint Leaf Oil 0.3, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice 0.2, Sodium Hydroxide 0.1 to pH. That is 99.97, and Limonene at 0.02 and Linalool at 0.01 make 100.00
• The 1 percent line falls after the sodium cocoyl glutamate
• This is not fragrance-free, and we are not going to call it that. It is flavoured with peppermint oil at 0.9 percent and spearmint leaf oil at 0.3 percent, and the two components of those oils that the EU makes declarable are declared: limonene 0.02 percent and linalool 0.01 percent. A flavour is a fragrance and hiding it behind the word flavour is the same trick as hiding one behind the word parfum
• Abrasivity RDA 68, by the radiotracer method to ISO 11609. The standard's own ceiling is 250 and plenty of whitening pastes sit at 150 to 200
• No SLS. Replaced by sodium cocoyl glutamate at 1.0 percent, which foams less, and that is the whole trade
• No titanium dioxide. Nothing replaced it, because it is a whitener with no cleaning function, so the paste is off-white
• No preservative, and here the claim holds: at 35 percent sorbitol and 8 percent glycerin the water activity is too low for bacteria or moulds to grow. This is the same mechanism as the waterless balm on the skincare shelf
• No triclosan, no artificial sweetener, no saccharin, no aspartame, no dyes, no plastic microbeads, no charcoal
• Honest trade-off one: xylitol at 3.0 percent is here for taste, not as a cavity active. The evidence for xylitol against caries comes from doses of 6 to 10 g a day from gum, and a pea of toothpaste contains about 0.03 g. We are not going to let it read as a second active
• Honest trade-off two: it foams little. If lather is how you judge a toothpaste, this will feel wrong for about a week
• Honest trade-off three: an off-white paste looks less clean in the tube than a bright white one. That is titanium dioxide missing, and it is doing nothing for your teeth either way