You Don’t Have To Worry About Lead In Your Toothpaste

The dose makes the poison, and you really don’t eat much toothpaste

Pictured: Unlikely to harm your health. Photo by William Warby on Unsplash

There have been a swathe of media stories talking about toothpaste recently. Usually, we only hear about toothpaste in the context of doing a bit more brushing, or the odd advertisement on TV that sells the dream of minty-fresh breath and perfect teeth, but the headlines right now are telling a different story.

Instead of the usual “brush your teeth more” reminder, there are headlines arguing that toothpaste might actually be quite bad for your health. Based on some new findings, it appears that brushing your teeth could come with a large side of toxic heavy metals.

But is that really true? Well, no.

Brushing your teeth is still on the menu, you don’t have to worry all that much about lead in your toothpaste.

Toothy Problems

The data for all this hubbub about teeth comes from a new report by the advocacy group Lead Safe Mama. LSM is a not-for-profit that basically exists to test the levels of various toxins in products that are used or marketed to children.

There’s nothing wrong with LSM’s methods per se — they simply take products purchased off the shelf, raise funds for testing…