Have you ever wondered about the quality of the water used during your dental visits? During routine dental procedures, water passes through long narrow tubes before reaching the instruments that are used to clean and rinse your teeth and your mouth. This tubing has the potential to harbor bacteria if not treated properly and routinely.
At Waterstone Family Dentistry, we are fully committed to keeping the dental treatment water safe for you and your family. In the same way that you might filter drinking water at home, we treat the dental unit water using a special cartridge system know as DentaPure. The technology behind the DentaPure Cartridge is similar to what NASA uses to ensure that water used in space does not contain harmful levels of bacteria or viruses.
The DentaPure Cartridge attaches to the waterlines that feed into the dental unit and the equipment attached to the unit. A small amount of non-allergenic iodine is released into the water as it passes through the cartridge. The iodine reduces the bacteria in the waterlines so that it meets the safety levels and standards that have been established by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and other regulatory agencies.
Other measures that our office takes to ensure water safety are:
- Flushing the dental unit waterlines every morning as well as between patients
- Using anti-retraction or anti-backflow valves to prevent oral fluids from entering waterlines
- Routine testing of the water quality
- Shock treatments performed regularly on the waterlines
- Using only cold water in the dental units, as bacteria counts can increase in the presence of heated or warmed water
You can rest assured that we are taking all measures and precautions to ensure your safety in our office.
