Toothbrushes

The toothbrush is an instrument consisting of a small brush on a handle used to clean teeth through tooth brushing. Toothpaste, often containing fluoride, is commonly added to a toothbrush to aid in cleaning. Toothbrushes are offered with varying textures of bristles, and come in many different sizes and forms. Most dentists recommend using a toothbrush labelled "soft", since firmer bristled toothbrushes can damage tooth enamel and irritate gums as indicated by the American Dental Association.^[1] Toothbrushes are often made from synthetic fibers, although natural toothbrushes are also known in many parts of the world.

[edit] History

A variety of oral hygiene measures have been used since before recorded history. This has been verified by various excavations done all over the world, in which chewsticks, tree twigs, bird feathers, animal bones and porcupine quills were recovered.

Many peoples have used forms of toothbrushes through the ages. Indian medicine (Ayurveda) has used the neem tree (a.k.a. daatun) and its products to create toothbrushes and similar products for millennia. The end of a neem twig is chewed until it is soft and splayed, and it is then used to brush the teeth. In the Muslim world, the miswak, or siwak, made from a twig or root with antiseptic properties has been widely used since the Islamic Golden Age. Rubbing baking soda or chalk against the teeth was also common.

The first toothbrush to resemble the modern toothbrush is believed to have been invented in China. Japanese Zen master Dōgen Kigen recorded on Shōbōgenzō that he saw some monks washed their teeth with a brush when Dogen had been in China in 1223. This brush used horse tail hairs attached on a cattle bone stick.

A photo from 1899 showing the use of toothbrush.

The earliest identified use of the word toothbrush in English was in the autobiography of Anthony Wood in 1690, in a sentence about buying a toothbrush from a man named J. Barret.^[2]

William Addis of England is credited with creating the first mass-produced toothbrush in 1780.^[3][4] In 1770 he had been placed in jail for causing a riot. While in prison, he decided that the method for teeth brushing of the time – rubbing a rag on one's teeth with soot and salt – could be improved. So he took a small animal bone, drilled small holes in it, obtained some bristles from a guard, tied them in tufts, then passed the bristles through the holes on the bone and glued them. He soon became very wealthy. He died in the year 1808 and left the business to his eldest son, William II.

The first patent for a toothbrush was by H. N. Wadsworth in 1857 (US Patent No. 18,653) in the United States, but mass production of the product in America only started in 1885. The rather advanced design had a bone handle with holes bored into it for the Siberian Boar hair bristles. Boar wasn't an ideal material; it retained bacteria, it didn't dry well, and the bristles would often fall out of the brush. It wasn't until World War II, however, that the concept of brushing teeth really caught on in the U.S., in part because it was part of American soldiers' regular daily duty to clean their teeth. It was a practice that they brought back to their home life after the conclusion of the war.^[3]

A child being shown how to use a toothbrush.

Natural bristles (from animal hair) were replaced by synthetic fibers, usually nylon, by DuPont in 1938. The first nylon bristle toothbrush, made with nylon yarn, went on sale on February 24, 1938. The first electric toothbrush, the Broxodent, was introduced by the Bristol-Myers Company (now Bristol-Myers Squibb) at the centennial of the American Dental Association in 1959.

In January 2003, the toothbrush was selected as the number one invention Americans could not live without, beating out the automobile, computer, cell phone, and microwave oven, according to the Lemelson-MIT Invention Index. ^[5]

[edit] Environmental impact

Despite being comparatively a small source of pollution (as the amounts of resources required to make a single item are small), tooth brushes still make up for 50 million pounds of plastics per year for the USA alone that end up in landfills. ^[6][7]

[edit] See also

• Oral hygiene
• Teeth cleaning twig
• Dental floss
• Toothpaste
• Chewable toothbrush
• Electric toothbrush
• Ultrasonic cleaning
• Miswak

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Toothbrush

• Taking Care of Your Teeth Naturally
• American Dental Association statements on Toothbrushing
• International Toothbrush Collection, a searchable database
• BBC h2g2 The History of Toothpaste and Toothbrushes