“Our initial hypothesis was that the synthetic gums would have a lot more microplastics because the base is a type of plastic ...

The researchers' analysis revealed that the lion's share of the microplastics were released from the gum in the first two minutes of chewing—thanks to the mechanical action, rather than the enzymatic ...

The subject chewed each piece of gum for 4 minutes, producing samples of saliva every 30 seconds, then did a final mouth rinse with clean water, all of which got combined into a single sample.