When you chew gum, you’re essentially gnawing on plastic.

And if you redecorate your home and sand down the old paintwork, the plastic binders in the paint can release microplastics into the air, which you might then inhale. You could swallow them when you drink from single-use plastic water bottles. Now another source of microplastics in the body has been discovered: chewing gum.

Chewing gum could release hundreds to thousands of microplastic particles into your saliva, a new UCLA study finds.