New research has warned that chewing gum can result in the ingestion of thousands of microplastics.
A statement released this week by the American Cancer Society said a pilot study found that natural and synthetic chewing gums released microplastics into saliva.
The project’s principal investigator Sanjay Mohanty said the research team was not seeking to alarm people.
“Scientists don’t know if microplastics are unsafe to us or not,” he said.
“There are no human trials. But we know we are exposed to plastics in everyday life, and that’s what we wanted to examine here.”
Scientists estimate that humans consume tens of thousands of microplastics every year through food, drinks, plastic packaging, coatings and production or manufacturing processes.
This latest research sought to identify how many microplastics a person could potentially ingest from chewing gum.
Researcher Lisa Lowe said natural gum products used a plant-based polymer, such as chicle or other tree sap, to achieve the right chewiness, while other products use synthetic rubber bases from petroleum-based polymers.
“Our initial hypothesis was that the synthetic gums would have a lot more microplastics because the base is a type of plastic,” she said.
“Surprisingly, both synthetic and natural gums had similar amounts of microplastics released when we chewed them.
“The most abundant polymers for both types of gum were polyolefins, a group of plastics that includes polyethylene and polypropylene.”
Most of the microplastics detached from gum within the first two minutes of chewing.
The full report is on the American Chemical Society website.
