According to a new pilot study, chewing a single gum will release hundreds or even thousands of microplastics into your saliva, resulting in the risk of the average gum tutor taking 30,000 microplastics in a year.
In this study, we tested five brands of synthetic gums and five natural gums. A person was tasked with chewing gum for four minutes in one experiment and 20 minutes in another experiment, and regularly collected saliva samples to assess microplastic content. Pilot studies are small-scale tests that are usually performed to improve the variables involved in the study prior to large-scale full-scale investigations.
Only one individual was involved in reducing the different chewing patterns and saliva human factors.
The study states, “Average 100 microplastics are released per gram of gum, while some individual gum pieces release as many as 600 microplastics per gram. Typical gum weighs 2-6 grams.
“If the average person chews 160-180 gum sticks a year, researchers estimated that it could result in about 30,000 microplastic intakes.”
Related Stories
Lisa Lowe, one of the researchers, said there is no difference between natural gums and synthetic gums in that the particles contain the same polymer in terms of the amount of microplastic released when chewing.
Sanjay Mohanty, the project’s lead researcher, said the study was limited to analysis of microplastics that are over 20 micrometers in width. Therefore, it is possible that no small microplastics were detected in saliva.
“The plastic released into saliva is a small portion of the plastic in the gums,” he said.
The researchers presented their research at the American Chemical Society’s spring meeting March 23rd to 27th.
Microplastics Hazards
Research shows that microplastics pose serious health risks to humans. A recent review of 3,000 studies found that airborne microplastics may increase the rate of colon and lung cancer.
These particles “have been shown to accumulate in organs and lead to biological changes such as oxidative stress and inflammation in human cell lines,” the authors wrote in their review.
Oxidative stress caused by microplastics can overwhelm the body’s defenses and ultimately damage DNA. They can interfere with the body’s hormonal function and weaken the immune system’s ability to combat cancer.
Microplastic exposure is associated with reproductive problems, metabolic disorders, and poor respiratory outcomes.
Microplastics are the source of smell sensation and were discovered in the olfactory bulb area of the brain just above the nose. They have also been identified in the test circle, blood flow, liver, intestines and lungs.
“This simple boiling water strategy has the potential to “decontaminate” (nano-microplastics and microplastics) from household water supplies harmlessly alleviate human intake (nano and microplastics) through water consumption,” the researchers write.
