Chewing gum releases microplastics in mouth: researchers

Chewing gum releases hundreds of small plastic pieces directly into people’s mouth, on Tuesday researchers also warned the pollution created by the Sweet on rubber.

The small study is because researchers have discovered more and more small shards of plastic called microplastics around the world, from the tops of mountains to the bottom of the ocean – and even in the air that we breathe.

They have also discovered that microplastics have been littered by human bodies – including in our lungs, blood and brain – fears about the potential effect that this could have on health.

“I don’t want to alert people,” Sanjay Mhanty, the lead researcher behind the new study, told AFP.

There is no evidence that immediately shows that microplastics are harmful to human health, said Mohanty of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Instead, the new pilot study tried to illustrate a small way in the way in which these usually invisible plastic pieces enter our body.

Lisa Lowe, a Ph.D. Student at UCLA, seven pieces chew each of the 10 brands Gom; Then the researchers performed a chemical analysis of her saliva.

They discovered that a gram of chewing gum (0.04 ounces) released on average 100 microplastic fragments, although some more than 600. The average weight of a chewing gum is approximately 1.5 grams.

People who chew around 180 pieces of gums per year can take around 30,000 microplastics, the researchers said.

This fades compared to the many other ways in which people take microplastics, Mohanty emphasized.

For example, other researchers estimate last year that a liter (34 liquid ounces) contained water in a plastic bottle on average 240,000 microplastics.

‘Tires, plastic bags and bottles’

The most common chewing gum that is sold in supermarkets is called synthetic gums, which contains petroleum -based polymers to get that tough effect, the researchers said.

However, the packaging does not state any plastics in the ingredients, simply using the words “gum-based”.

“Nobody will tell you the ingredients,” said Mohanty.

The researchers tested five brands of synthetic gums and five natural gums that use vegetable polymers such as tree juice.

“It was surprising that we found that microplastics were present in both abundant,” Lowe told AFP.

The gums colander almost all microplastics during the first eight minutes, she added.

David Jones, a researcher at UK’s University of Portsmouth who is not involved in the study, said AFP that manufacturers should be forced to give more specific ingredients than just ‘GUM-based’.

Jones said he was surprised that the researchers found certain plastics that were not known in GOM, which suggests that they might have come from another source.

But the general findings were “not surprising at all,” he added.

People tend to “take a bit of grinding” when it was told that the building blocks of chewing gum were similar to what is found “in car tires, plastic bags and bottles,” Jones said.

Lowe also warned of the plastic pollution by chewing gum – especially when people “spit it on the sidewalk”.

The study, which was presented to a peer-reviewed magazine but not yet published, was presented during a meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Diego.

The world’s largest chewing gum manufacturer, Wrigley, did not respond to AFP’s request for comments.

© 2025 AFP