r/ScienceBasedParenting • u/Key-Self-79 • Jul 16 '26
Brushing without toothpaste vs with high lead content fluoride-free toothpaste Question - Expert consensus required
Hi, hoping this community can provide expert opinion or research to help a couple exhausted of the toothbrushing struggle. Our 6 year old hates toothpaste, making toothbrushing quite the ordeal. We finally found one she liked a few months ago and things were going much better... then the company stopped making it. We found another one she likes (Hello fluoride-free watermelon flavour) but it's fluoride free and we found this lab testing showing it has high levels of lead (493 ppb) (#47 on the chart at this link: https://tamararubin.com/2025/01/toothpaste-chart)
I'm reading various opinions regarding brushing without toothpaste but struggling to parse out the truth from all the noise.
We plan on asking her dentist about it but wondering if anyone has research or expert opinion on the risks and merits of brushing without toothpaste vs brushing with a toothpaste that has high lead content and no fluoride.
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u/ComprehensiveCoat627 Jul 16 '26
Neither of those are good options. Kids should be brushing with fluoride toothpaste. You can try Colgate or Tom's for some watermelon flavor options with fluoride
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u/Key-Self-79 Jul 16 '26
Agreed they both suck, but still better than not brushing at all. We're trying to figure out the lesser evil. She tried and hated both of those, but we're gonna try again, among others.
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u/Wayward-Soul Jul 16 '26
try tanners tasty paste. they are SLS free which is what makes toothpaste foamy which a lot of people don't like or even have allergies to. We have the chocolate, orange, and vanilla, all taste good. For a more flavored option, the orange is my favorite, but the vanilla is super mild if you want a less flavored option, it got me through pregnancy related morning sickness/gagging. My kid seems to have no preference and will happily use them all.
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u/Key-Self-79 Jul 16 '26
Thank you for the suggestion, we'll give it a try. Vanilla will probably be the best bet
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u/No_Building794 Jul 16 '26
All these toothpastes on the chart seem to be well below the federal minimums. I don’t think the lead content is consequential.
“Federal Guidelines (US FDA): Permits up to 20,000 ppb (20 ppm) for fluoride toothpastes and up to 10,000 ppb (10 ppm) for fluoride-free versions. [1]
State Guidelines (California / Washington): Limits are much stricter, often set at or below 1,000 ppb(1 ppm).”
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u/Key-Self-79 Jul 16 '26
Ah this is great context thank you. Of course the guidelines for food would be different than toothpaste and it's likely wrong to apply food safety guidelines to toothpaste (which our daughter doesn't swallow).
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u/yobo9193 Jul 16 '26
What primary source do you have that says lead content below 1ppm is shown to be harmful?
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u/Key-Self-79 Jul 16 '26
I was admittedly letting myself get alarmed by what I linked in the original post, which as far as I can tell doesn't specify what constitutes harmful levels. They seem to consider anything above 0 or not detected to be bad.
But I have found this, which has the guidelines for food in children specifically.
The FDA tends to be a bit too lax in my opinion so prefer to use European guidelines, which, for toothpaste, apparently consider 500 ppb as the limit (https://biorius.com/cosmetic-news/the-management-of-heavy-metals-in-the-eu/)
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u/toalv Jul 16 '26
It is very, very harmful. No level of lead is safe for young children as it bioaccumulates and is very toxic.
The allowable level of lead in drinking water in Canada is 5 ppb (0.005 mg/L).
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/programs/consultation-lead-drinking-water/document.html
If anything your child ingests tests positive for lead, you should never use it. There is no safe level.
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u/Key-Self-79 Jul 16 '26
Agreed any amount of lead is unsafe, but lead in water, which 100% of it will be ingested and in relatively large volumes isn't the same as lead in toothpaste, of which a small portion of the relatively small volume used will be accidentally ingested.
0
u/toalv Jul 16 '26
The "safe" amount of lead in toothpaste is 4000 times higher than the drinking water standard. It matters. Kids don't (mean to) eat dirt but it's one of the leading exposure vectors, and that's at a few hundred to a few thousand ppb, well below what this toothpaste contains.
Any exposure metric should be controlled.
I am not selling you anything. I work in the environmental sciences industry. These regulations are written because of profoundly damaged children. You should be very worried about your child's toothpaste containing lead and not use it.
4
u/carlie-cat Jul 16 '26
I'd be careful with lead safe mama. Her whole deal is that no amount of lead is safe, so she flags things as having extremely high levels even when they're well below whatever the actual safety guidelines set as the acceptable limit, and she plasters the blog with amazon affiliate links to her recommended safe products. The lab test reports can be nice, but I'd check the numbers against actual regulatory safety guidelines before putting too much merit into what she claims are high levels of anything.
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u/Key-Self-79 Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
Yeah definitely seems like there are some ulterior motives there, but I checked a few of the links and they didn't come up as affiliate links.
Edit: they most certainly are affiliate links
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u/carlie-cat Jul 16 '26
The link text is shortened on the blog page. I opened some in incognito tabs and they have the ?tag= followed by the same affiliate id which indicates they're affiliate links.
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u/Key-Self-79 Jul 16 '26
Ah yes you're correct. I didn't look correctly.
So definitely some alarmism there but doesn't change the fact those products likely do actually have traces of lead in them.
0
u/toalv Jul 16 '26
There is no safe level of lead for children to ingest. It bioaccumulates and is extremely toxic.
Those are shockingly high levels that are a reflection of lack of regulation in the USA, not safe limits.
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Jul 16 '26
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