The rinse shelf. Eight records judged on the documents they publish: the panels the law wrote, the lists the cosmetics chose, and the prices the doses imply. The hero frame is one of the bank's shared grooming portraits; the photo bank holds no mouthwash product photography, so the cards below run imageless, as every grooming Card here does.
Checked and updated October 2026
The short version: ACT Anticavity, the shelf's fluoride record, wins at 87 on the most complete panel per claim made, with Listerine Cool Mint at 85 and Walmart's Equate Blue Mint at 84 behind it. The counts the whole table rests on: a Drug Facts panel with actives and percentages reachable from the maker's own product page, 0 of 8; the panels stand in the makers' FDA filings, not on their websites. Alcohol content printed as a number, 2 of 8, both at 21.6 percent. A dose printed with a volume and a time, 7 of 8. An ADA seal claimed, 5 of 8, across three different claims. The monthly cost at the printed dose runs from $2.25 to $25.36, a spread of $23.11. Colgate Peroxyl is sent home: its own panel limits it to seven days, a course, not a rinse.
First, the decision
The default buy: ACT Anticavity Fluoride Rinse, 87. One claim, anticavity, carried by a complete panel, a bottle that meters its own dose, and the cheapest month on the shelf at $2.25.
The gum record: Listerine Cool Mint, 85. The deepest document here, four actives dosed on a filed panel with an ADA Accepted line, at the shelf's highest printed alcohol figure, 21.6 percent. Read its card before you buy it for a dry mouth.
The same panel, the store's name: Equate Blue Mint, 84. The identical filing under Walmart's brand, its own ADA panel and guarantee, a narrower use line, and no pill on this card because Walmart's own page would not load for this desk.
The alcohol-free drug claim: Crest Pro-Health Complete Clean, 83. Cetylpyridinium chloride 0.07 percent, the antigingivitis claim filed at zero alcohol, and a family name that also sells a weaker, alcohol-carrying sibling under the word Intense.
The breath records: TheraBreath Fresh Breath, 67, and CloSYS Ultra Sensitive, 60. Cosmetics both, ADA acceptance claimed for breath in both makers' copy, and neither working ingredient dosed anywhere either maker publishes.
Sent home: Colgate Peroxyl. A complete, honest panel that caps its own use at seven days. The full case is at the foot of the cards.
This shelf, in three findings
The claim word is regulated, the register word is not
Six of these eight bottles are drugs in the eyes of the law, because they claim to fight plaque or gingivitis or cavities, and the law answers a drug claim with a document: the Drug Facts panel, actives named with percentages, dose and warnings in a fixed format. Two are cosmetics, because they claim freshness and breath, and the law asks a cosmetic only for a list. That line, not any flavour or price, is the shelf's real divide, and it is visible in the numbers. Every percentage on this page stands on a panel the law compelled; every cosmetic percentage is absent for the same reason. Take No. 18, The Law Prints the Number, argued the position from the scalp shelf, where four of five printed doses stood under federal panels; Take No. 2, The Number Nobody Prints, argued it from the deodorant shelf, where the antiperspirants' panels dosed and the deodorants' lists did not. Mouthwash is the shelf where both takes come home: the dose exists where the law compels it, and the cosmetics' silence is not modesty, it is category.
Alcohol is a number on two bottles and a phrase on five
Two records on this shelf print their alcohol content as a figure: Listerine Cool Mint and the store brand that copies it, both at 21.6 percent, the number filed where the law puts it, in the inactive ingredients. The rest sell the absence as language. ACT prints ZERO ALCOHOL across its front panel, Crest and Peroxyl print ALCOHOL FREE, TheraBreath prints no alcohol, SmartMouth answers the question in its own FAQ, and CloSYS, whose formula carries none, does not headline it at all in the copy as read. A phrase and a figure are not the same document. The figure can be compared, and the comparison has a second step the brand names hide: Listerine's Original sibling files at 26.9 percent, ACT's Total Care and Restoring siblings carry 11 percent under the same family name that prints ZERO on this bottle, and Crest's Intense sibling files 15 percent alcohol beside a weaker active. The variant word decides the alcohol posture on this shelf. The brand name never does.
The second price is the dose's price
A bottle's shelf price is the first price; the second is what the printed dose does to it in a month, and the shelf's order reverses when the second price is counted. The doses run from ACT's 10 mL once a day, 300 mL a month, to the 20 mL twice-daily standard the antiseptic and CPC panels share, 1,200 mL a month, a fourfold difference in consumption before any price is read. At the printed doses the months run from $2.25 for ACT to $25.36 for SmartMouth's two-bottle set, which is sold by its maker as a one-month supply and empties in about 24 days at the dose its own page prints. The dearest bottle on the shelf is not the dearest month, and the cheapest month belongs to the smallest dose on the fullest panel. Every value score on this page is graded on the second price.
How the scores work
Each card is scored out of 100 on five rows. Specification & claim honesty (30) grades whether the published record distinguishes a cosmetic rinse from an antigingivitis or antiplaque claim, and whether the maker's own pages carry the record or leave it to the filing: on this shelf the claim word is regulated and the register word is not, and a trademark or a mechanism story standing where a number belongs is graded as the weaker document. Active record (20) grades what the bottle's documents say is in it: the actives with their percentages, the alcohol content printed as a number or sold as a phrase, and the dose printed with a volume and a time. Fit & format (20) grades the dose as printed against the job the rinse claims, with the alcohol posture read against the mouths the rinse serves. Value (15) grades the checked price per month at the printed dose, the bottle counted, not the shelf price alone. Longevity & service (15) grades, for a consumable, the maker's programme register, the maintenance of any seal it claims, and the subscription or guarantee terms as printed. The shelf's drug records are graded as the drug documents they are, and the cosmetics beside them are graded on their own documents, never on the panel they do not carry. Scores grade documents, not mouths. Efficacy is graded nowhere on this page: this desk rinsed nothing and treats no gum, and that discipline is printed again in the honesty section below.
ACT Anticavity Fluoride Rinse
Start with the claim, because this record makes exactly one. ACT Anticavity is a fluoride rinse, and its Drug Facts panel, filed by Chattem, says anticavity and nothing wider: sodium fluoride 0.05 percent, with the fluoride ion figure printed beside it, 0.02 percent w/v, the highest strength a rinse may sell without a prescription, both numbers standing because the law's format asks for both. The directions are the shelf's most considered document. The dose is 10 mL, once a day, swished vigorously for one minute, and the bottle meters it: the panel instructs the user to hold the bottle upright and squeeze until the reservoir fills to the FILL LINE, so the measure is built into the package rather than left to a cap and an estimate. No eating or drinking for 30 minutes after rinsing is printed as part of the dose, and the age floor is 6, the widest door among the drug records here. The front panel carries the alcohol posture as a word that is also a number, ZERO ALCOHOL, and the inactive list bears it out, with no alcohol entry at all. Two findings hold the score under the shelf's ceiling. Cetylpyridinium chloride stands in the inactive ingredients, an active-class antiseptic riding undosed in a list where the law does not make the maker quantify it, so a second working ingredient is present in the bottle and absent from the numbers. And the ADA position is claimed with a caveat the card prints rather than tidies: the maker's benefits copy claims American Dental Association acceptance, a retailer of the brand notes the ADA logo was removed from the packaging, and this desk did not confirm the adult rinse in the ADA's own product search as read on the check date. The family name also covers siblings, Total Care and Restoring, filing alcohol at 11 percent under the same 1X Daily banner, so the ZERO belongs to this variant and not to the brand. At $3.99 for 532 mL and 300 mL a month at the printed dose, the month costs $2.25, the floor of this shelf by a wide margin. One claim, fully documented, at the smallest dose and the lowest price: the win is the record's completeness per claim made.
$3.99 · 18 fl oz (532 mL) at Target, checked October 23, 2026
Buy · $3.99 at Target| Specification & claim honesty | 25 / 30 |
| Active record | 19 / 20 |
| Fit & format | 18 / 20 |
| Value | 15 / 15 |
| Longevity & service | 10 / 15 |
Listerine Cool Mint Antiseptic
The reference document of the American rinse shelf. Cool Mint's Drug Facts panel, filed by Kenvue, names four essential-oil actives with their percentages, eucalyptol 0.092 percent, menthol 0.042 percent, methyl salicylate 0.060 percent, thymol 0.064 percent, under the purpose the monograph allows, antigingivitis and antiplaque, with the use line at full width: helps prevent and reduce plaque and gingivitis. The dose is the shelf's standard measure, 20 mL, two-thirds of a fluid ounce or four teaspoonfuls, swished vigorously for 30 seconds, morning and night, and the alcohol content is printed as a number, 21.6 percent, where the law files it, in the inactive ingredients. The filed front label carries the ADA Accepted line. No record on this page states more, in more places, to a stricter format. The costs are printed on the card rather than discovered later. The alcohol figure is the highest among the records graded here, and the Original sibling in the same family files at 26.9 percent, a fact the Cool Mint documents do not volunteer; a mouth that is dry, sore or alcohol-averse is served by other cards on this page, and the fit row is marked for it. The age floor is 12, the narrowest door among the drug records. And the maker's own product page, as read on the check date, prints none of the panel: no actives, no percentages, no alcohol figure, marketing copy where the document should be, so the record's best version lives in the FDA filing and on the bottle, not on listerine.com. At $7.99 for the 1.5 L bottle and 1,200 mL a month at the printed dose, the month costs $6.39. The deepest document on the shelf, carrying the deepest alcohol figure with it.
$7.99 · 1.5 L at Target, checked October 23, 2026
Buy · $7.99 at Target| Specification & claim honesty | 24 / 30 |
| Active record | 20 / 20 |
| Fit & format | 16 / 20 |
| Value | 12 / 15 |
| Longevity & service | 13 / 15 |
Equate Blue Mint Antiseptic Mouthrinse
Walmart files this record twice over, once as the copier and once as a maker in its own right. The front panel says what the product is, Compare to Listerine Cool Mint active ingredients, asterisked, with the disclaimer printed on the filing that Walmart, not Kenvue, distributes it. Behind the borrow, the document is complete and its own. The same four actives at the same four percentages, eucalyptol 0.092, menthol 0.042, methyl salicylate 0.060, thymol 0.064 percent; the same alcohol printed as a number, 21.6 percent; the same dose, 20 mL for 30 seconds, twice a day in the current filing; its own ADA Accepted panel on the front of the bottle, plaque and gingivitis named under it; and a service term the brand does not print on its own filing, Satisfaction guaranteed, or we will replace it or give you your money back. Two deductions separate the copy from the original. The use line is narrower, helps control plaque that leads to gingivitis, where Listerine's panel claims the fuller sentence, and the honesty of the compare line is borrowed authority even with its asterisk in place. The third limit is this desk's, and the card states it plainly: Walmart's own product page would not load for capture on the check date, so no Walmart shelf price is printed here. The identical filing, same template, same bottle, same ADA panel, sells at Target under the up & up name at $6.99 for two 1.5 L bottles, which puts the month at about $2.80 at the printed dose, second only to ACT. The record a buyer can read on the bottle is nearly the brand's equal. The door to buy it is the one thing this page could not verify.
Walmart's own product page would not load for this desk on the check date, so no Walmart price is printed and this card carries no pill; the identical filing sells at Target as up & up, $6.99 for two 1.5 L bottles, checked October 23, 2026
| Specification & claim honesty | 24 / 30 |
| Active record | 19 / 20 |
| Fit & format | 16 / 20 |
| Value | 13 / 15 |
| Longevity & service | 12 / 15 |
Crest Pro-Health Complete Clean Mouthwash
Procter & Gamble's CPC record is two documents wearing one name, and the card grades the better of them while printing the other. Complete Clean, the variant graded, files cetylpyridinium chloride at 0.07 percent as antigingivitis and antiplaque, alcohol free, dosed at 20 mL for 30 seconds twice a day from age 6, and the maker's own store sells the litre at $4.99 with a money-back guarantee printed on the page. At 1,200 mL a month the month costs $5.99 at that price, the best value among the brand-name drug records here. The name, though, does not hold the record still. Under the same Pro-Health banner the Intense variants file CPC at 0.05 percent with alcohol at 15 percent by weight, and the Advanced variants file sodium fluoride at 0.02 percent with cetylpyridinium chloride riding undosed in the inactives: three different documents reachable by one brand name, separated only by the variant word. A buyer who picks up the Intense sibling gets a weaker active and an alcohol posture this card's bottle does not have, and nothing in the family name warns him. Two further marks hold the score. No ADA claim stands anywhere in the maker's copy for this record as read, the only full-claim drug record here with no seal claimed or carried. And the maker's own product page does not print the panel or the percentage, so, as with Listerine, the number lives in the filing. What the flagship's own document does, it does cleanly: a complete panel, an exact dose, an alcohol posture stated on the front panel, and the CPC strength the line is built on. The family around it is the deduction.
$4.99 · 1 L at the maker's own store (Oral-B), checked October 23, 2026 ($6.00 for the same litre at Walgreens at the same check)
Buy · $4.99 at Oral-B| Specification & claim honesty | 22 / 30 |
| Active record | 17 / 20 |
| Fit & format | 18 / 20 |
| Value | 14 / 15 |
| Longevity & service | 12 / 15 |
TheraBreath Fresh Breath Oral Rinse
The oxygenating case, and the shelf's clearest lesson in what a cosmetic may claim. Fresh Breath is not a drug and does not pretend to be one on its label: no Drug Facts panel exists for it, and its working ingredient, sodium chlorite, the heart of the brand's OXYD-8 story, is named in the ingredient list and dosed nowhere the maker publishes, not on the bottle, not on the maker's page, not in the brand's science copy as read. What the maker claims instead is breath, and it claims it with a discipline the card credits: the ADA acceptance printed in the maker's own copy is scoped to exactly that, ADA accepted to help reduce bad breath, the scoped acceptance the seal programme gives a cosmetic rinse, and a guarantee stands in the brand's terms, 100 percent satisfaction guaranteed, money back. The dose is printed with a volume and a time on the current label, 10 mL rinsed and gargled for 90 seconds, twice a day for adults and once a day for ages 12 to 17, and the brand's how-to copy renders the same dose as a capful for a minute with a 30-second gargle behind it. The arithmetic in the copy is register rather than record: fights bad breath for 12 hours on the front panel becomes 24 hours in the bullets because the dose is twice a day, a true sum presented as a duration. The family lends the flagship authority it has not filed for: the same brand sells Healthy Gums and Deep Clean as drug rinses with filed panels, Deep Clean at cetylpyridinium chloride 0.1 percent, the strongest CPC number on the extended shelf, and none of that record belongs to this bottle. At $7.69 for 473 mL and 600 mL a month at the printed dose, the month costs $9.76, a drug-shelf price for a cosmetic document. The honest cosmetic, priced past the honest drugs.
$7.69 · 16 fl oz (473 mL), Icy Mint, at Target, checked October 23, 2026
Buy · $7.69 at Target| Specification & claim honesty | 21 / 30 |
| Active record | 9 / 20 |
| Fit & format | 15 / 20 |
| Value | 9 / 15 |
| Longevity & service | 13 / 15 |
CloSYS Ultra Sensitive Rinse
The shortest document on the shelf, and the card grades both halves of that sentence. Ultra Sensitive's ingredient list runs four entries, water, Cloralstan, trisodium phosphate and citric acid, with a separate flavour-control dropper of mineral oil and peppermint oil for a rinse sold unflavoured. Nothing in it is dressed as a drug claim, and the package copy's ADA Accepted line is scoped the way the seal is given, helps reduce bad breath. For a mouth that cannot take flavour, burn or a long list, this is the genuine article: 30 seconds, morning and evening, and nothing with a percentage to react to, because nothing carries one. That is also the deduction, and it is structural. Cloralstan is a trademark, the maker's name for its stabilised chlorine dioxide, and its concentration is printed nowhere in the documents as read, not in the package copy and not on the maker's page: the working ingredient of the bottle is a brand name where the drug records put a number, Take No. 2's point in its purest form on this shelf. The dose is half printed. The directions time the rinse at 30 seconds and, in the maker's documents as read, name no volume; the half-ounce figure stands in retail copy only, the one record of eight whose dose this desk could not complete from the maker's own paper. The seal claim likewise stands in the package copy as sold, rather than on a maker page this desk could open. At $13.99 for the 32 fl oz bottle, the month at the retail-printed half-ounce dose, twice a day, computes to $13.31, flagged here as computed on a dose the maker did not print. A gentle record, genuinely. A thin one, measurably.
$13.99 · 32 fl oz (946 mL) at Target, checked October 23, 2026
Buy · $13.99 at Target| Specification & claim honesty | 19 / 30 |
| Active record | 8 / 20 |
| Fit & format | 14 / 20 |
| Value | 8 / 15 |
| Longevity & service | 11 / 15 |
SmartMouth Original Activated Mouthwash
The two-part case, and the strangest document split on the shelf: the most forthcoming merchant page here, wrapped around the same silence as every cosmetic. SmartMouth's own product page prints a full PRODUCT FACTS table, both solutions' complete ingredient lists side by side, the exact mixing dose, pour Solution 1 to the 10 mL mark and add Solution 2 to the 20 mL mark, swish vigorously for 30 seconds, gargle and spit, twice a day, and a published study cited for the system. No other maker on this page shows its whole hand on its own website. The hand, though, has no numbers in it. Sodium chlorite in the first solution and zinc chloride in the second are the working pair, the sulfur eliminator and the zinc activator of the brand's copy, and neither carries a percentage anywhere the maker publishes. The brand can print a percentage when the law asks: its Clinical sibling, a drug, states cetylpyridinium chloride 0.05 percent when mixed, on the maker's own page. The Original is a cosmetic, so the number is not owed, and it is not given. Two smaller findings sit in the maker's own copy. The page answers its alcohol question with a flat yes, alcohol-free, while Solution 2's printed list includes benzyl alcohol, a preservative and not the ethanol the claim addresses; both facts stand on the same page for any reader to weigh, and the headline is the broader of the two. And the set is sold as a one-month supply, a claim the maker's own dose arithmetic does not quite carry: at 20 mL of each solution a day, the two 16 fl oz bottles empty in about 24 days. The 60-day satisfaction guarantee stands in the brand's terms and is credited in the longevity row. At $19.99 for the set, the month at the printed dose costs $25.36, the dearest month on this shelf by more than eleven dollars. The ritual is printed to the millilitre. What is in the millilitres is not.
$19.99 · the two-bottle set (two 16 fl oz bottles) at the maker's own store, checked October 23, 2026
Buy · $19.99 at SmartMouth| Specification & claim honesty | 20 / 30 |
| Active record | 9 / 20 |
| Fit & format | 13 / 20 |
| Value | 5 / 15 |
| Longevity & service | 12 / 15 |
The eight records, in numbers
| Product | Record kind | Actives as printed | Alcohol as printed | Dose as printed | ADA seal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ACT Anticavity | Drug Facts panel | Sodium fluoride 0.05% (0.02% w/v fluoride ion); cetylpyridinium chloride in the inactives, undosed | ZERO ALCOHOL, front panel | 10 mL, 1 minute, once a day; the bottle meters to the FILL LINE | Claimed in maker copy; the logo is reported removed from current packaging |
| Listerine Cool Mint | Drug Facts panel | Eucalyptol 0.092%, menthol 0.042%, methyl salicylate 0.060%, thymol 0.064% | 21.6%, in the inactive ingredients | 20 mL, 30 seconds, twice a day | Yes, ADA Accepted on the filed label |
| Equate Blue Mint | Drug Facts panel | The same four actives at the same four percentages | 21.6%, in the inactive ingredients | 20 mL, 30 seconds, twice a day | Yes, on its own front panel |
| Crest Pro-Health Complete Clean | Drug Facts panel | Cetylpyridinium chloride 0.07% | ALCOHOL FREE, front panel | 20 mL, 30 seconds, twice a day | No claim in the maker's copy as read |
| TheraBreath Fresh Breath | Cosmetic list, no panel | Sodium chlorite, no percentage printed | No alcohol, in maker copy | 10 mL, 90 seconds rinse and gargle, twice a day | Yes, in maker copy, scoped to bad breath |
| CloSYS Ultra Sensitive | Cosmetic list, no panel | Stabilised chlorine dioxide as Cloralstan, no concentration printed | None in the formula; not headlined in the copy as read | 30 seconds, morning and evening; no volume in the maker's documents as read | Yes, in package copy, scoped to bad breath |
| SmartMouth Original | Cosmetic, both lists on the maker's page | Sodium chlorite and zinc chloride, no percentages printed | Alcohol-free claimed on the maker's page; benzyl alcohol listed in Solution 2 | 10 mL of Solution 1 to the 20 mL mark with Solution 2, 30 seconds, twice a day | No claim |
| Colgate Peroxyl (skip) | Drug Facts panel | Hydrogen peroxide 1.5% | ALCOHOL FREE, front panel | 10 mL, at least 1 minute, up to 4 times a day, 7 days maximum | No claim |
What a dollar buys
| Product | Door | Shelf price | Dose per day | Per month at the printed dose |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ACT Anticavity | Target | $3.99 / 532 mL | 10 mL | $2.25 |
| Equate Blue Mint | Target, the twin filing as up & up | $6.99 / two 1.5 L bottles | 40 mL | About $2.80 (Walmart's own price not captured) |
| Crest Pro-Health Complete Clean | Oral-B, the maker's store | $4.99 / 1 L | 40 mL | $5.99 |
| Listerine Cool Mint | Target | $7.99 / 1.5 L | 40 mL | $6.39 |
| TheraBreath Fresh Breath | Target | $7.69 / 473 mL | 20 mL | $9.76 |
| CloSYS Ultra Sensitive | Target | $13.99 / 946 mL | 30 mL, on the retail-printed half-ounce dose | $13.31 |
| SmartMouth Original | The maker's store | $19.99 / two 473 mL bottles | 40 mL of mixture | $25.36 |
| Colgate Peroxyl (skip) | Target | $11.99 / 500 mL | Up to 40 mL, for 7 days at most | Not a monthly rinse; the bottle is the course |
Which one to buy
Cavities are the worry: ACT (87). One claim, the fullest panel per claim made, the smallest dose on the shelf, and the cheapest month at $2.25.
Gums are the worry, alcohol no object: Listerine Cool Mint (85), the reference panel; or Equate Blue Mint (84) for the same filing under the store's name, its own ADA panel and guarantee attached.
Gums are the worry, alcohol is: Crest Pro-Health Complete Clean (83), the antigingivitis claim filed at zero alcohol. Check the variant word on the bottle before you pay: Intense is a different record, weaker and carrying alcohol.
Breath is the whole job: TheraBreath Fresh Breath (67), the cosmetic whose seal claim is scoped to breath and whose guarantee is printed; CloSYS Ultra Sensitive (60) when flavour and burn are what the mouth cannot take.
The two-bottle ritual appeals: SmartMouth Original (59), bought with its card read: the lists are public, the percentages are not, and the month is the shelf's dearest at $25.36.
A sore mouth, this week only: Colgate Peroxyl, sent home above, bought on its own panel's seven-day terms.
How this page was made, and what it rests on
Every score on this page rests on the maker's own published evidence, the filed FDA label record for the six drug entries, the package copy the bottles carry as sold, and the merchant shelf, read on October 23, 2026, with every merchant door opened and priced the same day. Where a document could not be read in its primary form, the card says so and grades what stands instead. Kenvue's and Procter & Gamble's own product pages were read in full and print neither maker's panel, so the Listerine and Crest records stand on the makers' FDA filings, cited as filings wherever they are used. SmartMouth's facts table stands on the maker's own page, the one complete maker-published record here. The TheraBreath and CloSYS records stand on the package copy as sold and the makers' copy carried by their merchant channels. ACT's consumer site could not be read by this desk, so its record stands on Chattem's filed panels and the bottle copy as sold. Walmart's own product pages would not load for capture, so Equate is graded on its filing, and its price stands as the identical filing's Target price, disclosed on its card rather than presented as Walmart's.
One absence is deliberate and is printed rather than left as a gap. Chlorhexidine, the antiseptic dentists prescribe for gum disease, is not sold over the counter in the United States, so no consumer door exists for it and no card was graded; the strongest antiseptic class in this shelf's subject belongs to the prescription pad, not the shelf. The variant hazards are likewise printed on the cards they belong to rather than smoothed into the brand names: Listerine Original at 26.9 percent alcohol beside Cool Mint's 21.6, ACT's Total Care and Restoring siblings at 11 percent beside this bottle's ZERO, Crest's Intense at CPC 0.05 percent and 15 percent alcohol beside Complete Clean's 0.07 at none, and TheraBreath's own drug siblings, Healthy Gums and Deep Clean, filed under the same brand as its cosmetic flagship.
No rinsing was done for this page. Nothing here was swished, gargled or spat, no mouth was examined, and efficacy is graded nowhere: burn, freshness, relief and results are graded only where a document claims them, and graded as claims. The doses and durations quoted are the makers' printed directions, not this page's prescriptions. Prices are the checked shelf prices of October 23, 2026 and will move.
The neighbouring records stand where they were graded. The morning shelf is Card No. 109's, where CeraVe AM won at 82 on a panel that prints its filters; the night shelf is Card No. 110's, where Differin Gel won at 85 on its filed panel, the comparison this shelf's six drug records invite and its two cosmetics cannot make. Take No. 2, The Number Nobody Prints, and Take No. 18, The Law Prints the Number, are applied on this page as the printed positions they are, and are not re-argued here.
Questions, answered from the record
Why does a fluoride rinse win a mouthwash ranking?
Because this page grades documents, and ACT's is the most complete record per claim made. Its panel claims one thing, anticavity, and prints everything that claim needs: sodium fluoride 0.05 percent with the fluoride ion figure beside it, a 10 mL dose the bottle itself meters to a fill line, one minute, once a day, and ZERO ALCOHOL on the front panel. It is also the cheapest month on the shelf at $2.25 at the printed dose. The win is labelled for what it is: a cavity record, not a gum record, and a mouth whose problem is gingivitis should read the Listerine, Equate and Crest cards, whose panels carry the antigingivitis claim this one does not make.
What is the difference between a cosmetic rinse and an antigingivitis rinse?
A legal category, printed on the bottle. A rinse that claims to fight plaque or gingivitis is an over-the-counter drug in the United States and must carry a Drug Facts panel naming its active ingredients with percentages, its dose and its warnings, in a format the maker cannot edit for tone. A cosmetic rinse makes no drug claim, carries no panel, and its ingredient list names what is in the bottle in descending order without quantifying any of it. On this shelf the six drug records print their percentages because the law compels the panel, and the two cosmetics, CloSYS and TheraBreath, name their working ingredients and dose neither. The claim word is regulated. The register word, fresh, clean, oxygenating, is not.
Does alcohol-free mean a rinse makes a smaller claim?
Not on this shelf's documents. Alcohol content and claim strength are separate lines of the record. Crest files the full antigingivitis and antiplaque claim at zero alcohol, Listerine files the same claim at 21.6 percent alcohol, and the two cosmetics make no drug claim at any figure. What alcohol changes is the mouth it suits: the panels and the makers' copy both treat the burn and the drying as the cost, which is why the alcohol posture is graded in the fit row, against the mouths each rinse serves, and not as a proxy for the claim.
Why is the store brand ranked beside the brand it copies?
Because its document is its own. Equate Blue Mint files the same four actives at the same percentages as Listerine Cool Mint, the same 21.6 percent alcohol, the same 20 mL dose, and it carries its own ADA Accepted panel and a satisfaction guarantee printed on its own filing. What it does not carry is the brand's use line at full width: its panel says it helps control plaque that leads to gingivitis, a narrower sentence, and its front panel borrows the comparison, asterisked, rather than earning the name. Walmart's own product page would not load for this desk, so the card prints the identical filing's price one aisle over, at Target, and carries no pill.
Why was Colgate Peroxyl sent home?
Because its own panel retires it. Peroxyl is an honest document, hydrogen peroxide 1.5 percent printed as an oral wound cleanser, alcohol free, dosed exactly, and its directions cap the job: do not use for more than seven days unless directed by a dentist or a doctor. It is a course of treatment for a sore mouth, not a daily rinse, and grading it as this shelf's eighth mouthwash would misfile a specialist as a staple. Buy it for the week something is wrong, on the panel's terms.
Did you rinse with any of these?
No. Nothing on this page was rinsed, swished or gargled, and no score rests on a use claim. Every number grades published documents: the maker's own product page where it could be read, the filed Drug Facts panel for the six drug records, the package copy the bottles carry, and the merchant shelf, all read on October 23, 2026. Efficacy is graded nowhere on this page. Where a claim exists only in copy, the card grades it as copy.
Next on the shelf: Card No. 121, Best Nail Clippers for Men, Card No. 110, Best Retinol Serums and Creams for Men, and Card No. 109, Best SPF Moisturizers for Men. The shelf this one's central argument was first counted on: Card No. 65, Best Deodorants for Men.