The erosive effect of various drinks, foods, stimulants, medications and mouthwashes on human tooth enamel.

Two forms of non-carious dental disorder - erosive tooth hard tissue loss and dental erosion - have been increasingly observed in recent years. Dental erosion is the chemical loss of dental hard substances caused by exposure to acids not derived from oral bacteria. Mechanical forces from, for example, the tongue, the cheeks or toothbrushing, increase loss of partly-demineralized tooth surfaces and the cumulative loss of dental hard tissue is defined as erosive tooth wear (ETW). Dental hard tissue losses which occur because of very frequent acid exposure, such as through increased vomiting, but without mechanical stress, are also assigned to tooth erosion. Without prior softening, practically no loss of enamel takes place due to abrasion with the modern Western diet. The present work is a continuation of earlier work. A total of 226 beverages, food, stimulants as well as medicines and mouthwashes were tested for their erosive potential on premolars and deciduous molars covered with a human pellicle. The influence of temperature, phosphate and calcium was also investigated in additional experiments. The change in hardness before and after immersion in the respective test substance was measured and the erosive potential was classified. For each test product, we determined pH and other properties which were possibly related to erosive potential. There were considerable and sometimes surprising differences between the tested products. The addition of phosphate did not influence the erosive potential of the liquids, but calcium did. A modified erosion scheme is presented, which incorporates these and other new findings.