Dr. Katie To explains how dentists used arsenic paste to kill tooth nerves before modern anesthesia existed. The practice faded in the West by mid-century but stayed legally sold in Europe until April 2014, despite known risks of genetic damage and tissue destruction.
Now, imagine we're putting arsenic on a live structure in your, in your tooth. They numb it, they open it up. The tooth is alive. We devitalize the nerve by putting arsenic on it. And that's when local anesthesia did not exist. This is fading from Western practice about middle of the 20th century. But guess what? That's like 1950s, '60s, '70s. As modern anesthetics made their way, you didn't have to use arsenic anymore. But check out what the date was, April 2014. That's right. The European regulators recommended revoking the remaining marketing authorizations for arsenic dental paste. I was like, what? 2014? That's incredible. So that is not okay that we're taking so long to realize, hey, this is bad for humans. Let's not use it. The risk was genotoxic effects and a small number of cases where the arsenic actually damaged the bone and the tissue around it. It's not surprising given what it is.
