Herbal Toothpastes May Contain Nicotine

Recently, a study conducted by the Delhi Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Research has revealed that many well known brand toothpastes or toothpowders do incorporate as ingredient the nicotine. However, most of the companies deny this usage, while many do not respond at all.

The study has proven that all the “fresh” feeling that you get after brushing rigorously your teeth with a herbal toothpaste, could be the result of the nicotine contained in toothpaste.

Researchers have named plenty of known toothpaste brands such as the Colgate Herbal and Neem Tulsi, Alka Dantamanjan, Dabur Red or VICCO. In all these toothpastes, there has been found nicotine as an active ingredient in the mixture.

Certainly these news have a created a craze online, and just as any other such news it took very little time until it went viral. Social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook have made news of this fact, and so have several health blogs out there.

For instance, on the Nationalist News Network, there has been published an article in which it is stated that toothpaste brands such as Colgate Herbal do contain nicotine; moreover, it has been said that the nicotine content is between 10-18mg/tube which is roughly the equivalent of nicotine content found in 5-9 cigarettes (depending on the strength/nicotine content of the cigarette!).

The study has basically tested as many as 24 different brands of toothpaste and also toothpowder, and out of these in around 7 types there has been found quite a significant content of nicotine.

According to several experts in the field, adding nicotine to toothpaste might not only be extremely dangerous to the human health, but it is also illegal.

According to the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act of 2003, it is clearly forbidden by law to add any kind of nicotine content ingredients to non-nicotine based products.

Nicotine is one such harmful ingredient which can lead to several health complications and the greatest such health danger is cancer.

Even people who chew on nicotine gums are exposed to several health dangers: loose teeth, damaged dental enamel and stained teeth.

Nicotine is also an ingredient which is extremely addictive- hence the difficulty of smokers to give up on the bad habit- it is said that nicotine is actually even more addictive to the brain than heroin.

One of the greatest concerns of many experts is that if a child uses such a herbal toothpaste, he/she can unfortunately develop a nicotine addiction at a very young age.