Does Crest Have Microplastics? All 50 Formulas Checked (2026)

Last updated: August 2, 2026

The short answer

Crest contains no solid plastic microbeads. Those were banned under the Microbead-Free Waters Act and US toothpaste manufacturing ended in 2018. Anyone still telling you Crest has scrubbing beads is recycling a decade-old story.

What Crest does contain, in most but not all formulas, is a water-soluble synthetic polymer, either poloxamer 407 or carbomer. These are petroleum-derived plastics in the chemical sense, but they dissolve rather than existing as particles, which is a meaningful difference we come back to below.

The useful finding is that Crest is not one answer. It is three. Which polymer you get, or whether you get one at all, is decided by which product line you pick up off the shelf.

How we checked

Fluoride toothpaste is regulated in the US as an over-the-counter drug, so the manufacturer must file a full ingredient label with the FDA. We pulled all 50 Crest dentifrice labels filed by The Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Company in the FDA's DailyMed system and read the inactive-ingredient lists directly. That is P&G's own disclosure, not a scraped database. A handful of products appear more than once in the filings (different pack configurations), which we have left in rather than quietly adjusting the denominator.

Crest by product line

The kids' formula finding

Worth pulling out on its own: every Crest kids' toothpaste we found in the FDA filings lists carbomer, across Sparkle Fun, Bubblegum, Strawberry and Strawberry Rush. There is no polymer-free kids' Crest in the current filings.

We want to be careful about what that does and does not mean. Carbomer is a crosslinked polyacrylic acid used as a thickener, it is water-soluble, and there is no published measurement of particle release from a children's toothpaste. It is not evidence of harm. But if you are a parent who has been buying kids' Crest specifically to avoid additives, the polymer is there and it is worth knowing, because the adult Pro-Health line does not have it.

What these ingredients are

• Poloxamer 407. A synthetic block copolymer built from polyethylene oxide and polypropylene oxide units. In Crest it is doing the foaming and surfactant work, which is why it clusters in the Scope and Active Foam lines. Water-soluble.
• Carbomer. Crosslinked polyacrylic acid, a synthetic thickener that gives paste its body. Also water-soluble.
• Not plastics: cellulose gum (plant cellulose), xanthan gum (fermented sugar) and carrageenan (seaweed). All three are common across these labels and all three are natural polysaccharides. Lists that count them are padding.

Do these count as microplastics?

This is a genuine definitional disagreement and we would rather show it than pick a side for you.

Under the definition most researchers use, a microplastic is a solid, insoluble plastic particle below 5 mm. Poloxamer and carbomer dissolve, so on that definition Crest contains no microplastics at all. Under the broader definition used by groups like Beat the Microbead, any synthetic petroleum-derived polymer in a personal-care product counts as a plastic ingredient, because it still goes down the drain and still comes from fossil feedstock. On that reading, 35 of the 50 formulas qualify.

What is not supportable either way is the claim that brushing with Crest releases a countable number of microplastic particles into your mouth. No lab has published a particle measurement for any Crest formula. Any specific number you see attributed to Crest is invented.

Which Crest to buy instead

• Stay in the brand, change the line. If you want Crest without a synthetic polymer, Crest Pro-Health (Advanced Protection, Advanced Bacteria Protection, or Sensitivity Relief) and the Clean Breath range carry neither poloxamer nor carbomer. That is a same-shelf, same-price swap.
• Skip the foam. The reliable tell across the whole brand is foaming and whitening claims. “Active Foam,” “stain-blasting foam” and the Scope combinations are where poloxamer 407 lives.
• For kids, there is no in-brand fix. Every kids' Crest in the filings uses carbomer, so a polymer-free children's paste means leaving the brand. See our microplastic-free toothpaste picks.
• Don't trade away fluoride for this. These polymers are soluble and unmeasured; cavities are neither. Treat this as a which-tube question, not a whether-to-brush question.
• Compare with the other big brand: Sensodyne's 14 formulas use PEG-8 instead, and the category picture is in microplastics in toothpaste.