If cavities are caused by bacteria and alcohol is very efficient at killing them why alcohol is not used in toothpaste production?
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Alcohol is also very efficient at killing human cells too. We need to ride the line of things that hurt bacteria without harming our cells. Alcohol is across that line.
The goal of brushing your teeth isn’t to kill bacteria outright – it’s to remove deposits of food and plaque that allows bacteria to thrive and multiply, and excrete lots of acid that damages your teeth.
Actually sterilizing your mouth would be hard to do and require very high concentrations of alcohol. And it’s pointless because new bacteria would colonize your mouth in no time. Not to mention, there are plenty of good bacteria in your mouth that are important for good oral health and hygiene, for instance because they out-compete other (bad) microbes and thus help prevent fungal infections and the like.
Toothpaste is a product intended to be put in your mouth. As such, there is a relatively high chance that you’ll ingest some of it. Toothpaste manufacturers likely wouldn’t put alcohols in their toothpaste because most of the alcohols that kill bacteria are also quite toxic to people, too.
This is the equivalent of putting penicillin or ampicillin in toothpaste.
Not only are both of those pharmaceutics expensive, they kill microbes and pathogens alike.
Both inhibit cell wall synthesis, while ampicillin inhibits transpeptidase, penicillion inhibits peptioglycan synthesis.
The ionic fluoride in saliva, in plaque, and within enamel and dentin shifts the equilibrium of demineralization-remineralization toward remineralization. Fluoride acts as a catalyst for uptake of calcium and phosphate ions and results in a greater efficiency in remineralizing the areas of enamel and dentin that have been affected by acidic attack
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