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2nd. Edition

Industrial Research on Bad Breath

A glimpse of industry-based research on oral malodor is provided here in the chapter by Niles and Gaffar. During the First International Workshop on Oral Malodor last year, an interesting dichotomy arose between university and industry researchers (see Appendix 1). Whereas the former tend to look at oral malodor as a condition of potential medical importance, industry investigations tend to concentrate on the cosmetic side, i.e., masking of odors of pizza, smoking etc.
As opposed to anti-plaque and anti-gingivitis claims, breath freshening remains a cosmetic claim in many countries. Since water also reduces bad breath for a given period (albeit a very brief one), practically all oral products can fit neatly into this category. Consumers and dentists themselves have a conspicuous difficulty in determining which products actually "take your breath away", and for how long. Few papers have been published on malodor reduction for periods of above 2 or 3 hours. Mouthwashes shown to reduce bad breath for 8 hours or more include 0.2% chlorhexidine formulations (Rosenberg et al., 1981; 1982), Listerine™ (Kozlovsky et al., 1994) and a recently developed two-phase oil:water mouthwash (Rosenberg et al., 1982; Kozlovsky et al., 1994).