Do cheaper, and safe, teeth whitening gels exist?!

[Yellowdaisies7]

I’ve just started using Polar Day gel, which I bought from my dentist. It costs £35 per tiny tube, and apparently I will need up to about 10 tubes!

Surely this gel must be very cheap to produce. Does anyone know whether cheaper, safe versions exist, and if so, where to buy them, please?!

Just get some crest professional effects strips, I do 10 treatments over 10 nights every 6 months and costs £30, my teeth are really white.

This gel can only, legally , be provided by a dentist after an examination as part of a prescribed course of treatment.

It is illegal to sell anything with this level of hydrogen peroxide or carbamine peroxide in the U.K. , the EU , Australia and NZ.

Therefore if you buy it you are buying from criminals knowingly breaking the law. What guarantee do you have that it is not counterfeit , that it is what it says, that it has been stored properly (refrigerated) ?

This goes for crest whitening strips etc which another poster has mentioned , totally illegal .

This stuff is not cheap to buy from legitimate dental suppliers who only sell to dental practices which is the only legal way to obtain it.

Absolutely illegal to sell these in U.K. no guarantee they are not counterfeit and contain safe chemicals . You are buying from criminals who are knowingly breaking the law if bought in U.K.

Thank you for the replies! I didn’t know that it’s illegal to buy it from anyone other than a dentist. That explains why it’s so expensive from the dentist - they have a monopoly on distribution so can hike the prices! Given that 750ml of bleach costs 65p at the supermarket, and it surely can’t cost much to combine bleach with gel, the price of teeth whitening gel is being hiked a lot!!!

It is not bleach that is used on teeth , neither is it pure hydrogen peroxide , it’s normally carbamine peroxide stabilised with various other things (hence why you have to keep in it a fridge ) and potassium nitrate to control sensitivity, fluoride and other ingredients etc.

It is expensive for the dentists to buy from dental suppliers , and has to be stored refrigerated , so the mark up is not what you think it is and well below normal commercial mark ups.

It used to be available legally for about £10 for a mouth tray and multiple tubes when I was a student (a long time ago). It still is on eBay, but yes, you don't know it's exactly what it's supposed to be. Dentists here charge in excess of £250.

I’ve been in practice decades and even in the 90s you could not make a mouth tray for £10 and the gels were , at cost , around £10 a tube then .

However the EU introduced the laws on tooth whitening because beauticians were using sodium perborate (banned as causes birth defects etc ) , sodium hypochlorate (swimming pool cleaner) , and hydrogen peroxide in such concentrations it caused serious burns and tooth loss as well as all these chemicals causing increased risk of mouth cancer .

The laws were brought in because of the permanent damage done to people, damage still being perpetuated by sales of illegal gels. https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/dont-buy-teeth-whitening-products-from-online-marketplaces-agxQc7m2V4ow