Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Salon Columnists
Follow these links for the most recent column by:
Susie Bright
Robert Burton, M.D.
Joe Conason
Sean Elder
David Horowitz
Garrison Keillor
Anne Lamott
Greil Marcus
Joyce Millman
Camille Paglia
Amy Reiter
Mary Roach
Scott Rosenberg
Ruth Shalit
Michael Sragow
Virginia Vitzthum
Sarah Vowell
Cintra Wilson
Burt Wolf

+ Columnists' schedule

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Health & Body

Eating germs
Our semi-sterile lives may be too much of a good thing. Now scientists are inventing "dirty" therapies to remedy our dangerous cleanliness. This is the second of two parts.
By Susan McCarthy
[05/04/00]

Urge: Naked World
Porn snafu
Larry Flynt accidentally sends smut to skateboarding fans.
By Jack Boulware
[05/04/00]

Urge: Naked World
Suckling monkeys
The women of a tribe in the Amazon jungle breast-feed small primates and other animals.
By Jack Boulware
[05/03/00]

Talking dirty
Bring on the germs. Too much cleanliness may be making some people sick. First of two parts.
By Susan McCarthy
[05/03/00]

Urge: Naked World
A royal trap
The former Miss Topless Belgium and others are sentenced for setting up Princess Stephanie's hubby with a tryst that ended their marriage.
By Jack Boulware
[05/02/00]

Complete archives for Health & Body

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Apparently the CrossAction isn't just any toothbrush. It isn't, in the same way the Mach 3 wasn't just any razor. Both were developed by Gillette (Gillette owns Oral-B), a company with a flair for extravagant, costly research into everyday toiletry items.

I asked CrossAction development team member Dave Weber why a company would spend three years and $72 million reinventing the humble toothbrush. He said, "We believe that being leaders in daily oral hygiene care and physical plaque removal really takes understanding the science and going beyond what's been traditionally thought of in terms of toothbrush design." This is what a man who spends 11 months in a room working on a toothbrush sounds like. It sounds to me like the company should have let him out to go to the movies every now and then, but who am I to argue with a leader in daily oral hygiene care and physical plaque removal.

Mary Roach Mary Roach's column appears in Salon Health & Body every other Friday. + Biography + Archives

The notable feature of the CrossAction toothbrush -- aside from its costing a dollar or two more than its competitors -- is that it has angled bristles. "Vertical bristles just sweep across the teeth," said Dave, who is 40 and has a mustache with bristles of about the same length as the CrossAction toothbrush's. "If you angle the bristles in the direction of travel," continued Dave, "they are pushed between the teeth as they sweep across. So you get better penetration."

Does better penetration matter? Apparently so. Dave told me about a study from this month's American Journal of Dentistry. On the off chance that you don't subscribe to the American Journal of Dentistry, I'll tell you what it says. It says CrossAction blew 14 leading toothbrush brands out of the sink. It removed 9 percent to 64 percent more plaque.

The tests were done in Oral-B's product evaluation laboratory in Belmont, Calif., home of the "brushing robot arm" and the glass prism tooth. These were gizmos invented by the toothbrush engineers to let the toothbrush R&D people film actual between-teeth close-ups of angled bristles penetrating at different depths. I would bet you the cost of a CrossAction toothbrush that at some point in the robot arm tooth brushing proceedings, one of the lab techs leaned over and opened his mouth and had the robot brush his teeth, the way people who spend too much time in the copy room eventually photocopy their faces, or other parts. At least I hope so.

Next page | Being videotaped while performing oral care on yourself