Welcome

Welcome to the official ISO/TC 106 web site, developed to keep interested parties informed of the activities of the Technical Committee.

Dental Standards – A Global Presence

There are very few adults in the world who do not experience some form of dental or oral disease in their lifetime.  Significantly, dental caries continues to pose an important public health problem across the world, affecting about 60–90% of schoolchildren and almost 100% of adults.  Dental caries contributes globally to an extensive loss of natural teeth in older people, and 15 – 20% of middle-aged adults have severe periodontal (‘gum’) disease.

This underlines the importance of ISO/TC 106 dental standards to the dental profession and the general public. Around a million dental professionals world-wide are using clinical materials and instruments, and billions of members of the general public are using over-the-counter oral hygiene products, all being the subject of international dental standards.

More than 50 years of dental standardization

ISO/TC 106 was established in 1962 and met first in 1963 in England. The British Standards Institution held the secretariat until 2004 when it was transferred to the Standards Council Canada in 2004, administered by the Canadian Dental Association. Nineteen countries have hosted the TC 106 annual meeting, and the 50^th meeting was held in 2014 in Berlin, Germany. 

 A commemorative video of the 50th ISO/TC 106 meeting.

British Dental Journal article describing 50 years of dental standards development (by D.W. Jones).

The table for location and dates of ISO/TC 106 plenary meetings.

The mandate of TC 106 was to continue the work of the FDI World Dental Federation which had produced nine international dental standard documents (at that time named ‘Specifications’) between 1953 and 1958, and these standards became the responsibility of TC 106.  The FDI continues as a ‘Liaison Member’ of TC 106.

There are now 180 published TC 106 dental standards, 52 under development or revision, covering a wide range:

• dental materials
• dental instruments
• dental equipment
• dental terminology
• oral hygiene products
• dental CAD-CAM systems
• biocompatibility of medical devices used in dentistry
• dental implants

Under the Vienna Agreement, TC 106 standards are published unchanged as European standards (CEN; European Committee for Standardization).

To accommodate the rapid advances in materials technology, the trend now is to develop ‘performance’ standards: the components of manufacture of a product are no longer mandated, but rather the performance requirements must be met.  ISO/TC 106 contributes to the quality and safety of products used in the treatments by dental professionals as well as hygiene products used by the public. – International Standards make a significant contribution to oral health.