Engineering and Dental Colleges Team Up to Improve Safety of Oral Health Care

Faculty in the University of Illinois Chicago College of Dentistry and College of Engineering have collaborated on strategies to make the provision of oral health care at the university’s dental clinic safer during the global pandemic. The team of engineering educators and students has closely studied how aerosols are generated from ultrasonic scalers and other instruments, and suggest that the use of a polymer solution may mitigate the creation of dental aerosols. The polymer would be used in place of water in dental instruments, like the ultrasonic, and is thought to prevent the formulation of droplets, creating thread-like material instead. The filaments are much easier to contain than the traditional flying droplets created by water. The findings are to be published in the Physics of Fluid Journal.  Read more here.