Take a look at this chart and see who are the worse offenders.
Pure water’s pH level is 7, which is a neutral acidic level. At ph4, your teeth start losing enamel, one of the four tissues that make up teeth. Enamel is the hardest substance in human bodies, and 96 per cent of it is made of minerals.
As it turns out, typical sour lollies are ph3, which is kind of crazy. It quickly goes to ph2.5 — with Skittles, Baby Bottle Pop powder, Brach’s Gummi Bears and Sqwigglies Gummi Worms — and 2.4 with Mentos Fruit Chew and 2.2 with Sour Skittles.
But it gets a lot worse. These are the three worse offenders — Altoids Mango Sours score a ph1.9 while Wonka Fun Dip Powder gets down to ph1.8. The worst is WarHeads Sour Spray, only 0.6 less acid than battery acid. [Northwest Dentistry via Kottke]
James
Friday, November 18, 2011 at 10:36 AMBefore people start getting worried about sour lollies burning their kids mouths out please note that the pH scale is exponential. This means that 0.6 difference between the sour spray and battery acid is a BIG difference.
Bob
Friday, November 18, 2011 at 1:38 PMIt’s not a HUGE difference, but it’s bigger than it seems. A pH of 1.0 is about 4x as ‘acidic’ as a pH of 1.6
MrTaco
Friday, November 18, 2011 at 1:46 PMWonder where acid drops fall on this scale. Had one of those a couple months back, my teeth felt ****ing awful immediately.
Deb
Friday, November 18, 2011 at 1:48 PMI would also think that the acid gets neutralised or at least the pH goes down pretty quickly, it’s not like it stays there just dissolving away your teeth.
Deb
Friday, November 18, 2011 at 1:52 PMAlso (from wikipedia)
Gastric acid is one of the main secretions of the stomach. It consists mainly of hydrochloric acid and acidifies the stomach content to a pH of 1 to 2.
Cameron
Friday, November 18, 2011 at 3:36 PMYes, Deb, but how often do you have gastric acid in your mouth? Constant exposure to gastric acid (such as by constant vomiting) is highly detrimental to tooth enamel.
Hayley
Friday, November 18, 2011 at 4:02 PMIndeed – when looking for evidence of chronic vomiting, due to illnesses such as bulimia, reflux, etc, one of the the simplest ways is to see how worn down the teeth are from exposure to gastric acid.
David
Friday, November 18, 2011 at 4:37 PMYou would think that – by experiencing chronic vomiting, you would not need to look at teeth to actually verify it