Some surprising occupations pose hidden risks to dental health. Discover if your chosen line of business is eating away at your pearly whites without you realising.
When I moved to Paris and found a new dentist, he asked what I did for a living during our first meeting. Journalists, he assured me, didn’t face any particular dental-health risks, the only caveat being that regular maintenance sometimes got delayed as they were always on deadline and prone to cancelling appointments in order to jet off on a last-minute assignment.
“Which profession has the worst teeth?” I asked.
“Bakers!” he said, without missing a beat.
The baker in this etching appears to have a full gleaming set of teeth, but people in his profession are at high risk of poor oral health.
A dusty danger
This wasn’t the first time I had heard about the unwitting dental-health hazards of being a professional baker. I’d once known a French boulanger who had learned the craft of breadmaking as a teenage apprentice and was still a professional baker in his 30s. He was in what appeared to be strapping good health, apart from his strikingly decaying teeth. I was surprised to learn that he blamed the state of his oral health on the long-term effects of breathing in flour dust, which is considered a hazardous substance.
Public health campaigns and posters mean that many of us are aware that what we eat affects our teeth, but even flour and sugar in the air around us can have an effect.
An article published in 2015 in the International Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics (‘Exposure to flour dust in the occupational environment’) examines the assorted health risks of handling flour and breathing in flour dust for bakers as well as flour-mill workers, which include ‘baker’s asthma’ conjunctivitis and contact dermatitis.
“Exposure to flour dust can also lead to pathological abrasion of hard teeth tissues,” it reads. “The dust adhering to the teeth surface and gum edge creates a specific coating, which causes hard tooth tissue abrasion.” The authors cite a 1999 study that found tooth abrasion present in roughly 94 per cent of flour-mill workers who had been exposed to flour dust. Additional research indicates that exposure levels in both small- and large-scale bakeries is highest during the mixing and baking stages, with workers in bigger facilities also at risk during the receipt and opening of large containers of flour.
“Cereal flour is one of the basic materials used in the food industry and animal-feed production,” the authors write. “Taking into account the character of occupational activities in those branches, the most severe exposure to flour dust is usually observed in bakeries and grain mills. A significant exposure to flour dust occurs also in pasta factories, pizza bakeries, confectionery (cake and cookie factories), restaurant kitchens, malt factories, animal-feed plants and in agriculture.”
This cake-maker may be tight-lipped and gesturing to his wares to hide ‘pastry chef’s cavity’ caused by airborne sugars.
Chefs and caries
Safety protocols and handling procedures can help limit workers’ exposure to airborne flour dust, including proper ventilation and the installation of dust extraction systems. France’s SST01 (its occupational health association) warns pastry chefs against the risk of the professional hazard known as carie du pâtissier (‘pastry chef’s cavity’).
Apart from the obvious – excessive tasting of sugar-laden batters, icings and other sweet preparations – it cites risk factors including the handling and cooking of sugar, and the sifting of powdered icing sugar, which produces its own fine-milled dust, cautioning pastry chefs to brush their teeth after a shift and to visit their dentist every six months.
Occupational hazards
Jobs that cause severe tooth-grinding also pose a danger to dental health. While the stress of just about any job can incite both daytime and night-time grinding (known as bruxism), various forms of physical labour can be a less obvious root cause.
In a chapter on tooth-grinding in ‘Critical Decisions in Periodontology, Volume 1’, author Walter B Hall writes about “‘occupational’ bruxism, wherein certain occupations cause patients to grind their teeth. Jobs that involve riding a tractor, hauling nets on rocking fishing boats, using a jackhammer, and driving a taxi with bad springs have been implicated.”
Even dentists themselves are at risk of damage to their oral health resulting from their job.
Ironically, practising dentistry is rife with health risks, including exposure to disease, infection and contaminants, and musculoskeletal disorders from prolonged sitting and/or stooping over patients. US-based Delta Dental, which provides dental coverage for 74 million Americans, warns that even dentists themselves have reason to worry that their jobs might be messing with their own pearly whites.
According to the company website, “In a surprising twist, working in dentistry actually poses a higher risk for bruxism… than most industries.”
‘Teeth’ is at Wellcome Collection from 17 May to 16 September 2018.
About the contributors
Kristin Hohenadel
Kristin Hohenadel is an American writer and editor based in Paris. Her work has appeared widely in publications including the New York Times, Slate and Fast Company.