Where to Buy Dental Dams

Online Sources

If it's not convenient to take a trip down to your local health department office, you can try buying dental dams online at www.goodvibes.com. They offer a couple different varieties and in our experience ordering with them is quick and painless.

What Can I Do in a Pinch?

A non-lubricated condom can be a good alternative for dental dams if you're in a situation where you need a dental dam...now. To make a dental dam from a condom, trim the elastic band from the base of the condom and snip off the tip. Cut the condom along the shaft from what was the tip to what was the base. You should end up with a square or rectangular piece of latex that will work as a dental dam.

You might also be interested to know that non-lubricated condoms are generally less expensive than dental dams, and certainly less expensive than female condoms. In general, you could expect to pay around $1.50 for each dental dam. They're in demand and hard to find, so you might end up paying more. Condoms, on the other hand, are incredibly cheap. They give them away at our local Planned Parenthood office, and you could easily find them for around .75 cents per condom at your local discount drug store. It's amazing, but dental dams are generally twice as expensive as condoms. You can obviously pay more for condoms if you wanted - last time I checked a 12-condom box of LifeStyles Non-Lubricated Condoms was selling for about $9.

FYI: A Blurb on Dental Dams

In case you didn't know…the dental dam was invented in 1870 to help dentists cover and protect areas of the mouth during oral surgery, and as an aid to help them work in a "dry environment". Back then, it was more of a "rubber" dam, but nonetheless, this was the beginning of the dental dam.