A mouthful of chewing gum might also be a mouthful of microplastics, according to the results of a small pilot study. The research, presented at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society, suggests that a single piece of chewing gum could introduce as many as 3,000 microplastic particles into the saliva, positioning them for potential ingestion.
“Our goal is not to alarm anybody,” said Sanjay Mohanty, a study author and an engineering professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, according to a press release. “But we know we are exposed to plastics in everyday life, and that’s what we wanted to examine.”