Concerning Amounts of Toxic PFAS ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Tooth Floss and Dental Floss – Report

Does your favorite dental floss or tooth floss contain indicators of PFAS “forever chemicals?” Mamavation tested 39 different tooth floss products at an EPA-certified lab to find out. Some results from these oral-care products were eye-opening and you’ll want to read our recommendations right away.

You’ve trusted Mamavation to bring you topics like best air purifiers, best organic mattresses, and best green beauty makeup sans PFAS “forever chemicals,” now join us for our latest PFAS consumer study on tooth flosses sold to Americans. Want those results now? Scroll down to the bottom to see the raw data from our laboratory about dental floss with no detectable levels of PFAS indicators.

Disclosure: This consumer study is released in partnership with Environmental Health News. Scientific reviews were performed by (1) Terrence Collins, Teresa Heinz Professor of Green Chemistry and Director of the Institute for Green Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, (2) Linda Birnbaum, Scientist Emeritus and Former Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and National Toxicology Program, and (3) Pete Myers, Chief Scientist at Environmental Health Sciences, Adjunct Professor of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University, and co-author of Our Stolen Future.

This post was medically reviewed by Sondra Strand, RN, BSN, PHN. Donations were provided by Environmental Health News and Mamavation community members. Mamavation has only “spot-checked” the industry and thus we cannot make predictions about brands and products that we have not tested. Products and manufacturing aides can change without notice so buyer beware.

This post contains affiliate links, with some to Amazon, which means Mamavation will receive a portion of those sales and we will use that to pay ourselves back for the testing.

You can also give a tax-deductible donation to our consumer studies here through Environmental Health Sciences. Click “yes” when asked if the gift is in honor of someone and type “Mamavation.” Thank you! [Updated products added 8/2024]

Concerning Levels of PFAS ‘Forever Chemicals’ Inside Popular Tooth Flosses

Which brands of tooth floss are the safest for families to use on a routine basis for oral care? We tested the most popular dental floss products, found some concerning levels in some products, and will make recommendations for your dental care routine.

Mamavation tested 39 dental floss products at an EPA-certified laboratory looking for indications of PFAS “forever chemicals” and got a concerning glimpse of how many very popular products could be contaminating consumers in a way they had not realized. We picked up different types of dental floss like unwaxed floss, wax coating floss, nylon floss, flossers, spongy floss, and dental floss threaders.

It’s important to note that our lab is not looking for PFAS compounds directly, because it’s simply impossible to look for all of them. There are over 12,000 PFAS compounds and assays for less than 100 compounds exist in a really good commercial lab. This is why Mamavation commissions marker testing to look for a chemical called organic fluorine, which all PFAS “forever chemicals” have in common.

Other possibilities of contaminants found inside organic fluorine are things like fluorinated pesticide residue or fluorinated pharmaceutical residue. None of these contaminants are something our readers want in their products, so we will continue this type of testing. Here are our main findings from the results on dental floss testing:

• 33% of dental floss products sent to our EPA-certified laboratory had indications of PFAS “forever chemicals,” while 67% of products did not. In other words, 13 out of 39 products had indications of PFAS.
• According to our lab, levels of organic fluorine, a marker for PFAS, were found between 11 parts per million (ppm) to 248,900 parts per million (ppm).
• Tooth floss products have the highest levels of organic fluorine we have ever seen in any consumer study — Oral-B Glide had the highest amount at 248,900 parts per million (ppm).
• 4 tooth floss products had over 70,000 ppm organic fluorine — Oral-B Glide Pro-Health Deep Clean Floss; Up and Up (Target Brand) Smooth Slide Floss Mint; Colgate Total Mint Waxed Dental Floss; and Solimo (Amazon Brand) Extra Comfort Mint Dental Floss.
• No tooth floss marketed to children that we tested had any indications of PFAS “forever chemicals.” However, none of those products made it into the “best” category because they are all made of single-use plastics, which is not an environmentally acceptable solution.

[Updated products added 8/2024]

Revisiting Oral-B Glide

In a study published in 2019 in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, researchers found that women who flossed with tooth floss product Oral-B Glide dental floss had higher levels of PFAS in their blood than those women who didn’t. After marker testing was run on Oral-B Glide, it was confirmed that this product had indications of PFAS “forever chemicals” intentionally added to the product.

According to researchers, “Flossing with Oral-B Glide, having stain-resistant carpet or furniture, and living in a city served by a PFAS-contaminated water supply were also associated with higher levels of some PFASs.”

The American Dental Association came out swinging saying they found data “insufficient to support the conclusions presented.” They complained about the marker testing used not providing enough scientific evidence to prove that PTFE was found in the tooth floss. The women who reported using Glide were found to have elevated levels of PFHxS, which is another type of PFAS. And yes, Oral-B Glide does have the ADA seal of acceptance on its product.

Our advisor Terrence Collins, Teresa Heinz Professor of Green Chemistry and Director of Institute for Green Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, had some things to say.

“I think the ADA is confused about what matters with the finding of organic fluorine in dental flosses. For example, they should not be arguing about which PFAS compound might be in Glide Oral-B floss, but rather stop approving of any dental product that contains any forever PFAS compound.

They should start educating their members about the insidious nature of low dose adverse effects from endocrine disrupting chemicals where PFAS examples are often associated with the manufacture of Teflon (PTFE) polymer.

And they should brush up on the fact that polymers have largely escaped effective regulatory scrutiny so that we really don’t know what the low dose toxicity implications are of coating our teeth with the forever polymer, Teflon.

Like all branches of science and medicine, the ADA needs to understand that the seductions of chemicals with high technical and cost performances, like most PFAS compounds, have to be resisted until the health, environmental and fairness performances have been quantified and assessed and integrated into the value proposition. From where I am looking, all PFAS compounds will fail competent scrutiny in this area.”

Health.com reached out to Oral-B Glide and got a denial from the company about this study saying the following: “We have confirmed none of the substances in the report are used in our dental floss. The safety of the people who use our products is our top priority. Our dental floss undergoes thorough safety testing and we stand behind the safety of all our products.”

Mamavation sent out Oral-B Glide as one of our first samples to check to see if they had made any changes. However, when we got the results from those samples back, we are not convinced that they have made any changes to protect consumers.