A New Evaluation Method for Toothpaste
If having pristine teeth calls for thorough oral hygiene, then how well or badly does a given toothpaste clean? How effective is it? What should it contain in order not to damage the structure of the teeth? Such questions are primarily of interest to manufacturers of dental hygiene products, and answers are being delivered by researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM in Halle. Through close collaboration with the Microtribology Centre µTC in Karlsruhe they have developed a new process for testing the abrasive effect of toothpastes, allowing this ‘abrasivity’, as experts call it, to be compared and evaluated in the lab.