The plastic surrounds us. It is in daily use products, such as cutting tables, clothing or cleaning bullets, utensils that release tiny microme particles called microplastics. Now, according to a new study, one more product must be added: chewing gum.
A pilot study of the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) has discovered that masar gum can release thousands of microplastics in the saliva per piece and potentially be ingested. In addition, once used, gum are a source of pollution for the environment.
The study results have been presented on Tuesday at the American Chemical Society (ACS) meeting.
“We don’t want to alarm anyone”says Sanjay Mohanty, main researcher of the project and engineering professor at UCLA, but various studies with animals and human cells indicate that microplastics can be harmful, so that, while more definitive conclusions are obtained, a prudent option would be “to reduce exposure to microplastics,” he advises.
It is estimated that each person consumes tens of thousands of microplastics (between 1 micrometer and 5 millimeters wide) each year through food, drinks, plastic containers, and production or manufacturing processes. But, despite its worldwide popularity, gum as a potential source of microplastics has not been studied thoroughly.
10 different brands, same result
Mohanty and his team wanted to determine how many microplastics a person could ingest when chewing natural and synthetic chewing gum.
The gum are manufactured from a gumous base, sweeteners, flavorings and other ingredients, and while natural gum use a polymer of plant origin, such as tree sap, other products use synthetic rubber bases from oil -derived polymers.
The authors tested five synthetic gum brands and five natural gum brands and, to reduce the human factor of the different chewing and saliva patterns, made a single person try seven gum of each brand.
In one of the tests, the person chewed the gum for 4 minutes, then saliva samples were obtained every 30 seconds and in another experiment, saliva samples were collected periodically for 20 minutes to observe the microplastic release rate of each gum.
When measuring the number of microplastics present in each saliva sample, they discovered an average of one hundred microplastics per gram of gum, although some individual gum released up to 600 microplastics per gram.
A normal gum weighs between 2 and 6 grams, which means that a large gum could release up to 3,000 plastic particles, and if an average chewed person between 160 and 180 small gum a year, the authors estimate that they could ingest about 30,000 microplastics.
In addition, surprisingly, both synthetic and natives gums had similar amounts of microplastics released by chewing them.
And they also contained the same polymers: polyolephins, polyethylene, polyacrylamide and polystyrene terephthalates. The most abundant polymers in both types of gum were polyolephins, a group of plastics that includes polyethylene and polypropylene.
Most microplastics detached from the gum in the first two minutes of chewing and after eight minutes of chewing, 94% of the plastic particles collected during the tests had been released.
Therefore, the team suggests that it is better to chew a gum for longer than release a new one.
The study was limited to identifying microplastics of 20 micrometers wide or more due to the instruments and techniques used but it is likely that other smaller plastic particles in saliva could not be detected.
The authors recognize that new research is needed to evaluate the possible release of gum nanometric size plastics.
“The plastic that is released in saliva is a small fraction of the plastic that contains the gum”, So, to take care of the environment, “it is better not to throw it out or paste it to a wall” because the used gum are also a source of pollution for the environment, Mohanty concludes.