Study: Chewing gum ends up in micro -plastics in the body – an expert commenting on the result

Small Small pieces of plastic, or so -called micro -plastics, also ends up in the body of chewing gum, shows a recent study by the University of California (UCLA).

The study is reported by AFP.

In the study, the doctoral researcher chewed the chewing gum, after which the number of plastic pieces was analyzed for his saliva. The work asked the jaws: there were ten different chewing gum brands to be examined and seven pieces for each.

An average of one hundred pieces of plastic came out of the gram chewing gum. The top reading was 600 pieces of plastic. One piece of chewing gum weighed an average of 1.5 grams.

The researchers calculated that by grinding a piece of chewing gum every other day in the body, 30,000 small pieces of plastic would end up in the body.

The study was presented on Tuesday at a meeting of the US Chemistry Society in San Diego in California. It is currently peer review but has not yet been published.

« Sound It is quite possible, ”comments AFP News Research Director Arto Koistinen From the University of Eastern Finland.

« The bite gum is about 15-45 % of a substance similar to plastic or rubber. If now a piece of plastic is put in the mouth and begins to chew deliberately, it is likely that something will come off, » he says.

Koistinen emphasizes that he cannot say anything about a US study before familiarizing it, but he is excited to consider whether chewing gum could be a solution to a small mystery.

It is related to a wastewater survey conducted by the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) in the late 2010s, which compared water before and after cleaning. Micro-plastics analyzes were conducted at the University of Eastern Finland.

At that time, dirty, unrefined water was found in plastic, the exact composition of which remained a mystery. So it could have been chewing gum, Koistinen apricots.

At least the route would be obvious: from the mouth to the street, and from the street with stormwater to the treatment plant, if stormwater is led to a wastewater treatment plant, he outlines.

Chewing gum It is by no means the only, and not even the most significant route through which micro -plastics will enter into the body. AFP is more closely quoting another study that up to 200,000 plastic soles would have been measured in a liter of plastic bottled water.

The number of cooles seems very much.

« Our studies have only talked about particles found in individual plastic bottles, » he relate.

The diet is carried into the body, for example, from seafood, but according to Koistinen, almost anything that has been studied. Other sources include water and other fluids and breathing air. Almost everything plastic is rubbing and grinding when there is so much in the world.

According to Koistinen, the current view is that more than 90 % of the plastic that drifted into the gastrointestinal tract also leaves the « natural route » from the body. According to him, micro -plastic particles are so large that they rarely get through the intestinal walls elsewhere in the body.

On the other hand, even a finer nanomatic, even micro -plastics, may end up circling the body. That is why plastic has been found, among other things, in the blood, lungs and even the plants through which babies get their diet in the womb.

Whether Damage to plastic in the body?

According to Koistinen, this seems to be slowly accumulating.

According to a study published in 2024, the discovery of plastic on the walls of the blood vessels increased the risk of patients, for example, in myocardial infarction.

There are also results that in cell tests plastic seems to change the normal functioning of cells, Koistinen says.