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.

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 properties of saliva—reaching 94 percent within eight minutes.

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