kasdeya
kasdeya
I was expecting that my Listerine mouthwash’s active ingredient was going to just be fluoride, but it’s much weirder and more interesting than that. its active ingredients are:
- eucalyptol, a flavoring from eucalyptus. used in a lot of cough drops and drug-free decongestants
- menthol, a flavoring from mint. also used in a lot of cough drops and basically anything with a minty taste or a cooling sensation
- methyl salicylate, used to flavor root beer (apparently Listerine is the only brand of mouthwash to use this)
- thymol, a flavoring from thyme
apparently all of these aren’t just flavorings - they also do kill bacteria if they’re in large enough concentrations (which they definitely are here because they burn lol. the instructions say to swish for 30 seconds but I can’t swish for more than maybe 10 seconds before the burning gets too intense for me)
I wonder if this means that an intense cough drop with eucalyptol, menthol, and xylitol instead of sugar would be good for one’s teeth in (more-or-less) the same way as Listerine mouthwash
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also apparently methyl salicylate is chemically similar to aspirin (it’s the methyl salt of salicylic acid* and salicylic acid is a metabolite of aspirin) and because of that it can be toxic in large amounts. so uhh… definitely shouldn’t drink this mouthwash. not that I would want to. I feel like more than just the methyl salicylate would be toxic, anyway
* which is an interesting chemical too. it’s used for skincare. it… eats away the topmost layer of your skin, if I understand right. maybe that explains the uncannily clean sensation that lingers in my mouth after using this mouthwash
this mouthwash is also 21.6% alcohol (unsure if that’s by volume or by weight), but I guess they’re allowed to include so much ethyl alcohol in this stuff (to the point that it’s basically a liqueur, in a way) because drinking enough of this to get tipsy would definitely also kill you. kind of like how any cough syrup that still has DXM HBr in 2026 probably also has a fuckton of guaifenesin - so you can’t get high on it without the guaifenesin also giving you a very bad time, at best
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