Oh. Give yourself a Diet Coke break. News, talk, breakfast in association with our seamless connections with Ireland's number one broadband provider. Now, new research has found that electric toothbrushes are the least environmentally friendly to the planet when compared to other toothbrushes.

And for more on this, we're joined by Dr. Brett Dooen, who is associate professor in public dental health at Trinity College and the lead researcher of the report. Brad, can I ask you what's so bad about electric toothbrushes that they harm the environment?

Well, good morning. I guess we need to remember that the environment isn't just about carbon footprints.

So we looked at biodiversity. We looked at air quality. We looked at water quality wood up to the number of things that you do when you're looking at a life cycle assessment. What surprised us is that 11 per cent of what a normal person would use and resources, mineral use and and those kind of resources, 11 per cent of those go into a toothbrush. So you're you're one tenth of your yearly use of resources, goes into the manufacture of this electric toothbrush.

And they just figure they have a lot of stuff that goes into the machine and the rest of those like cars and phones and stuff.

But then toothbrushes are taken up 11 percent. That's smart.

Yeah. So can you imagine if you did an actual lifecycle assessment on a phone or on a car or on an electric car? How bad would that be?

OK, and what was very, very surprising from this report, I think, is that bamboo toothbrushes, which an awful lot of people use to try and be environmentally friendly, they're not great either.

They're very trendy at the moment. And they bamboo toothbrushes, bamboo cups, bamboo, everything. The fact is we have to grow them. So we have to we have to have land. We have to water these plants. We have to transport all this bamboo over in either raw or as a toothbrush. It requires a huge number, huge amount of of planetary resource to grow it. And that's OK.

So there is something badly.

So in that case, what toothbrushes should we be using if we want to kind of get it right in terms of the environment?

Well, at the moment you go for a standard plastic toothbrush and if you can find them, don't change the bristles, don't change the whole brush, change the plastic bracelet. And there's a number of manufactures that produce just a little bristle that goes into the head. And the other thing is ignore the three month recommendation for changing your bristles.

Just have a look at have a look at your toothbrush. If it looks like it needs to be changed and change the hair, it if it doesn't look like it needs to be changed, it's probably still effective.

So when it's splay, I don't change every three months. What if I don't know what your toothbrush look? Not great most of the time, but I want to display that fairly wide. That's the end of its life. And it doesn't matter how long that takes, it could take six months.

That's right. The evidence suggests once the bristles start to bend and look like they need to be replaced, you need to replace them. Some people might do that monthly. Some people six months. It's don't don't rely on the manufacturer's recommendations. All right.

This interview, fascinating stuff. Thank you for that. Indeed. That is Dr Brastow, an associate professor in public dental health at Trinity College and the lead researcher on that very interesting research.

Very interesting.

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