Swallowing toothpaste?

We switch my 3 year olds toothpaste to flouride several months ago. Our dentist said we don't have to switch yet because we really need to make sure he doesn't swallow any at all. I barely put any on the brush, just enough to show up really. He's pretty good about spitting it out but I can tell sometimes while I'm brushing that he has swallowed. We don't drink water from the tap, we have a water filter and doesn't that take out the flouride that they purposely put in tap water for oral health? DH freaks when LO swallows the saliva/toothpaste foam but I don't think it's a big deal since there's hardly any toothpaste at all on it. How do you feel about this? Are you ever concerned about flouride poisoning from swallowing extremely minimal amounts of toothpaste?

Don't you have to swallow large amounts of it for it to even actually be harmful?

With just that much, not at all.

Quoting Chelsea Dawns Mama:" Don't you have to swallow large amounts of it for it to even actually be harmful?"

That's what I thought but the dentist really scared DH about it I guess. And a friend of mine in dental school just posted a list of things about oral health and it said that small amounts of habitually swallowed toothpaste in young children can cause flouride poisoning. So, I thought I'd come on here and make a post, lol.

We switched our 2 1/2 year old to normal toothpaste because he had really stinky breath! I'm like you, I literally barely put any on the toothbrush & it has made a world of difference.

I think it has to be a lot and happening over a long period of time for it to be a big deal. I wouldn't worry too much if he's rinsing and spitting well. Might be worth Googling?

You have to almost ingest the whole tube for it to be toxic. We had an incident and I freaked out & that is what I was told by poison control and my SIL, who is a Dr.

I've been told you have to eat several tubes in rapid succession to get fluoride poisoning. Honestly, I swallowed toothpaste all the time as a kid. I was nuts about eating that smurf and never have had fluoride poisoning.

Cool. I'm glad I don't have a reason to be worried, cause I wasn't, lol. Thanks ladies!

I'm a RDA and I'm goign to tell you it's fine. you have to ingest a lot of tooth paste for it to hurt you. If your using drops/tabs, plus fluoride in your water PLUS fluoride in your tooth paste, then yes that is way too much.