Chewing gum can shed microplastics into saliva, pilot study finds

Synthetic and natural rubber are polymers that break down into smaller polymer particles (usually—whether synthetic or natural—this would strictly be micro-rubbers rather than micro-plastics, but other than the former being elastic, they have pretty similar properties and issues, and micro-plastics seems frequently to be used in a way which includes rather than being distinguished from micro-rubbers.)

Plastic is not metal, it's a tangle of polymer subunits that get scraped off relatively easily.

Whenever you scrape a plastic container with an utensil or finger, or even just from water being poured out of a bottle, a small amount of microplastics is released, and I think we can agree that chewing is a WAY more abrasive of a process.

But they are all mixed together, like sand, that's why they don't separate the specific type of plastic but use a generic "microplastics”

Somebody should just sell reused tire scraps as chewing gum replacements. The artificial substitutes are still much too expensive

The article mentions there was no difference between synthetic and natural gums in terms of microplastics released.