Teeth whiteners better brush up on their paperwork!

Thursday 24 July 2014

Beauty salons have been ordered to stop offering “teeth whitening” services and threatened with fines of up to £5,000 after a Health department crackdown.

Dentists have been bristling about salons offering teeth whitening, and have complained to the Health department, who found out that it’s a dental service that can only be offered by a registered dental practitioner.

Health say that after checking the legal position with the States lawyers they have written to 40 beauty salons to make sure that they know it’s illegal to offer teeth whitening without a full dental licence.

A statement from the department said: “Concerns have been expressed by dentists because tooth whitening is not a beauty or cosmetic treatment. If done without proper clinical assessment, or performed incorrectly, it can present a risk to an individual’s health.”

Jersey’s law works the same way as the UK’s where the General Dental Council (GDC), the body that regulates dentists took two cases through the criminal courts involving individuals who were not GDC-registered dentists and therefore were not entitled to undertake tooth whitening procedures.