Although Not Recognized,

as a tooth cleaner,

news reports of viral TikTok videos promoting Mr. Clean Magic Eraser as an effective and cheap way of whitening your teeth in the comfort of your own home have surfaced, photograph Rafael Rocha/Unsplash, according to KUTV, the unusual teeth whitening trend was kickstarted by a TikTok user called “theheatherdunn”, who claimed the big secret to having healthy, white teeth that dentists always compliment her on is using Mr. Clean Magic Erasers. In a clip that has gotten over 255,000 likes and over 2,500 comments, Heather shows how she uses a piece of Magic Eraser to rub her teeth without touching her gums,

the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser box clearly warns users not to use the product “on the skin or other parts of the body”, and the list of ingredients, according to the product’s U.S. patent, includes melamine, sodium sulfurous acid and formaldehyde, of which the latter two are the most worrying,

some dentists did come out to discourage people from following Heather Dunn’s example, warning that Magic Erasers are basically melanin sponges, which act like very fine sandpaper that can potentially ruin the enamel on your teeth, “Excuse me is that a Magic Eraser? Like, she’s afraid of fluoride but she’s cool with using a Magic Eraser on her teeth. A Magic Eraser is actually made of melanine foam. It’s basically foam that’s hard as glass and acts as a really abrasive sandpaper, meaning, yeah, your teeth are white because you scrubbed all the enamel off. So, in fact, no, don’t do this,” Dr. Benjamin Winters, an orthodontist from Plano, Texas responded on YouTube, but although rubbing your teeth with fine sandpaper sounds like a terrible idea, there is actually some research that actually suggests it works. A 2015 study found that melamine foam proved an effective tooth stain-removal tool, with only minimal scratching, and another study, from 2013, found it to be more effective than brushing in removing stains off of artificial teeth, so there you have it, unfortunately for the few pearly whites I have left, it is too late for me!