Environmental Causes Of Dental Erosion

There is a lack of education and public information based around dental erosion and furthermore, there is generally widespread ignorance of the deleterious consequences of dental erosion; this is distinctly the issue with erosion due to fruit juices as they’re seen to be healthy. [1][2] Tooth enamel is the hardest substance in the human body and it helps us with things such as chewing and biting. Even though enamel is an extremely solid substance, it can still break, and unlike bone, it cannot repair and thus, is lost forever. Enamel is the protective substance around the tooth, protecting the hypersensitive dentine. Dental erosion can lead to the loss of the enamel which exposes the dentine. This results in pain and

Dental erosion can take place due to chemicals that are exposed to our teeth from a selection sources, our environment and diet. These are known as extrinsic factors. Environmental factors involve constant exposure to acidic chemicals in fumes.[7] Factory workers are mainly affected by this for example, a case of dental erosion was reported in an individual who worked for over twenty years in the war industry. For at least 8 hours a day, this individual had inhaled and was exposed to chromic acid.[8] Furthermore, another example of an environmental factor is swimming pools with a critically low PH. This can be an issue as people constantly take in water while swimming and spit it back out. This leaves the teeth under constant acidic

Acid erosion usually comes about with abrasion and attrition.[11] Abrasion is the loss of tooth structure by force from a foreign object and is most often caused by brushing teeth too hard.[12]

In terms of preventing dental erosion, salivary factors have been shown to the most significant biological factors. When the brain detects a decrease in the PH of the mouth, your salivary flow rate increases. This increases the buffering system which, in turn, dilutes and clears acids on your teeth surfaces during the acidic attack.[14]

A few of the properties of saliva play a significant part in dental erosion. The flow of your saliva removes acids by swallowing it and it provides a buffering capacity which starts to neutralise and act as a buffer to dietary acid. [15] The flow of your saliva enables the dilution of the acids. Furthermore, saliva is supersaturated with respect to tooth mineral, it supplying the calcium, phosphate and fluoride essential for remineralisation following an acid attack.