Chewing Gum Is Flooding Your Mouth With Microplastics

Image by Getty / Futurism Developments Not to burst your perfectly blown bubble, but it turns out that chewing gum may be flooding your mouth with microplastics. As detailed in a pilot study, which is awaiting peer review, a team of UCLA researchers found that chomping down on just one stick of the rubbery candy releases up to thousands of microplastic shards into your saliva. The findings, which will be presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society this week, are yet another example of widespread microplastic pollution, which is so pervasive it's invaded the human brain. The authors, however, urge us not to panic about our chewing gum habit — at least not yet. "Our goal is not to alarm anybody," lead author Sanjay Mohanty, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at UCLA, said in a statement about the work. "Scientists don't know if microplastics are unsafe to us or not. There are no human trials. But we know we are exposed to plastics in everyday li ... Read full article.