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Comment by nargella | Hacker News Reader

Toothpaste blows my mind. It’s literally plastic in some baking soda type substance. Extra whitening? Larger plastic.

no it's not, it's fluoride and some soapy binders like SLS and ceramics or baking soda for whitening/cleaning. I suppose some of the tube might break off and form these microplastics, however I don't know too many people swallowing their toothpaste leftovers. It's a bad idea as you shouldn't ingest that much fluoride, which is much more highly concentrated than fluroide in water. If you're talking about microbeads then those were outlawed in toothpaste/cosmetics/etc in 2016, which went in effect in 2017.

There are toothpastes that contain plastic microbeads [1][2] and an FDA ban (for < 5mm size beads) came in effect only in 2015. Some toothpastes also have polyethele "specks" to provide color [3],

[1]: https://www.colgate.com/en-us/oral-health/brushing-and-floss...

[2]: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/05 /microbeads-exfoliators-plastic-face-scrub-toothpaste/

[3]: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/gum-balls/

Source? Wikipedia has pages on the various ingredients, which are a lot more complex than I realized, but I’m not seeing plastics…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toothpaste

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cwN983PnJoA

Perhaps this is dated now according to other comments.

Source on this? I heard they banned microbeads in toothpaste, does this remove all plastics or is there more?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cwN983PnJoA

Maybe not true anymore.

What blows my mind is that most chewing gum has plastic in it.

There's more. The gum base of chewing gum is made on the same exact machines as car tires. Once or twice a year the factory will shut down tiremaking, clean the line and do a huge run of gum base. Then they will resume tiremaking.

Source: someone who works at a major candy manufacturer

Is that the case of powder toothpaste, too?

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