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Expert view: Alex Orchard

British Dental Journal volume 229, page 300 (2020)Cite this article

This paper by an Eastman Dental Hospital and Trinity College Dublin collaboration is important as it is a detailed analysis on the environmental impact for one of the most widely recommended healthcare devices in the world - the toothbrush. As the authors highlight, there is currently no evidence that electric toothbrush use reduces incidence of dental caries or periodontal disease, even if it is better for reducing plaque levels.1 The researchers went to great lengths to do a 'cradle to grave' life cycle assessment of four, UK available, toothbrushes assessing 16 environmental impact factors.

Their landmark findings show the electric toothbrush had the greatest environmental impact in all categories, except water scarcity. The sustainability of the electric toothbrush was poor, especially when considering land use and reduction in biodiversity and habitat, in comparison to a plastic manual replaceable head toothbrush and a bamboo toothbrush.

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References

  1. Yaacob M, Worthington H, Deacon S et al. Powered versus manual toothbrushing for oral health. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2014; DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD002281.pub3.

  2. WHO. WHO global strategy on health, environment and climate change: The transformation needed to improve lives and wellbeing sustainably through health environments. Geneva: World Health Organisation; 2020. Available at https://www.who.int/phe/publications/global-strategy/en/ (accessed August 2020).

  3. Pichler P P, Jaccard I S, Weisz U, Weisz H. International comparison of health care carbon footprints. Environ Res Lett 2019; 14: 064004.

  4. NHS England. For a greener NHS. Available at https://www.england.nhs.uk/greenernhs/ (accessed August 2020).

  5. Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs. Environment Bill 2020. Available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/environment-bill-2020 (accessed August 2020).

  6. Watts N, Amann M, Arnell N et al. The 2019 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: ensuring that the health of a child born today is not defined by a changing climate. Lancet 2019; 394: 1836-1878.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dentist and MSc student in Epidemiology, University of Bristol, UK

    Alex Orchard

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  1. Alex Orchard
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Orchard, A. Expert view: Alex Orchard. Br Dent J 229, 300 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41415-020-2125-2

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