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Comment by woodruffw | Hacker News Reader

Your fluoride toothpaste has much, much more fluoride in it per gram than municipally fluoridated water does. That, along with a bunch of other additives, is why it has a poison control warning.

(A typical dab of fluoridated toothpaste has roughly as much fluoride as 2L of municipally fluoridated water.)

The "it's a side product of industrial processes" argument is emotively salient for a lot of people. But it's worth noting that a lot of things are industrial side products: you presumably don't believe that bran is dangerous just because it's by-produced by milling flour.

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Children have less fluoride in toothpaste, they also tend to just eat or swallow the toothpaste.

I have seen many times this argument about children who cannot be taught that the toothpaste must not be swallowed, but I am skeptical about how many such children exist.

As a small child, I certainly did plenty of stupid things, but none was of this kind. Perhaps that was due to the fact that my parents never imposed arbitrary prohibitions, but they always explained why it would be bad to do something that was forbidden for me. So if they said that toothpaste must not be swallowed, because it is toxic, I never swallowed it.

Therefore I believe that if there exist such children who swallow toothpaste, that is entirely the fault of their parents. This is not a more normal behavior than eating stones or any other objects. Any children who are old enough to be able to wash their teeth by themselves should be old enough to know what may be eaten and what must not be eaten.

My kids ate toothpaste. At the same time I met a guy (still a friend today) who believed somewhat that fluoride was a mind-control thing. I decided I needed more mind control, so I stopped trying to get them to stop. It didn't help, however the kids seem OK today.

Worth reading this silly thread to hit this gem.

Hope you have a great day!

>Any children who are old enough to be able to wash their teeth by themselves should be old enough to know what may be eaten and what must not be eaten.

My experience has been the opposite, it’s very common for kids to try to eat everything including toothpaste. you do your best to try to teach them not to do it, and use a low/no fluoride toothpaste in the meantime.

Right? They make it taste good[1]. Kids eat stuff that tastes good.

[1] https://www.target.com/s/kids+toothpaste

I had a strawberry toothpaste as a child that had delicious flavor and consistency similar to other sweets. Cannot blame the parents for me eating small amounts of it on occasion. At least I'm pretty sure it was fluoride free.

I doubt it's a conscious choice. I am an adult and I avoid toothpaste with fluoride because no matter what I do, once toothpaste gets to the back of my tongue it simply falls into my throat. I would imagine that for a child without decades of swallowing food it's even harder to control or even notice.

I don’t know of any public sources suggesting that children tend to do either of those things. Anecdotally, I definitely did not eat or swallow toothpaste as a kid.

Kids definitely eat toothpaste when they're young. My source is having children.

Absolutely. My older boy (3 y/o) definitely has eaten it and doesn’t quite get yet why he shouldn’t. I think the comments saying kids don’t do this or it’s the parent’s fault are from people who don’t have kids!

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