The Plastic in Your Chew: What Gum Is Hiding Behind Its Minty Smile

You chew it to freshen your breath. To stay alert. To kill time. But with every snap and pop of that peppermint-scented ritual, you may be releasing something far less refreshing into your mouth: microplastics—thousands of them, according to a startling new study.

Researchers found that a single piece of conventional chewing gum, often made with synthetic rubber and plasticizers, can shed tens of thousands of microplastic particles into your saliva during normal chewing. Not over days or weeks. In minutes.

And the kicker? Most of us never knew we were chewing on plastic in the first place.

The Secret Ingredients You Were Never Meant to Question

Gum base—the mysterious ingredient that gives chewing gum its stretch—is a proprietary blend, often derived from synthetic polymers similar to those used in tires, adhesives, and plastic bags. Think polyvinyl acetate, polyethylene, and butyl rubber. No nutrition label mentions microplastics. No brand markets its product as a tiny, chewable pollutant.

But now the science is harder to ignore. These particles don’t just stay in your mouth. They’re swallowed. Or absorbed. Or simply linger on the tongue, part of a growing pattern of plastic infiltration into the human body—air, water, food, and now: gum.

The Comfort of the Chew, Compromised

Microplastics have been found in human blood, lungs, and even placentas. While their long-term health effects are still being studied, early evidence links them to endocrine disruption, inflammation, and potential carcinogenic effects. And now one of our most casual, most childlike habits—chewing gum—is part of that conversation.

This discovery forces a cultural reckoning. Chewing gum was once marketed as healthful, even dental-friendly. A clean habit. But in the light of this research, it becomes something darker: a ritual of ingestion that disguises its harm behind spearmint smiles.

So the question becomes: how do you un-chew a habit? Can the industry reformulate? Can we retrain our jaws? Or are we already too deep into the habit of chewing synthetic comfort, one invisible plastic bite at a time?