And that by chewing it you are ingesting a bunch of microplastics? Please confirm if this is true. I don’t want to believe.

Side question: what alternative means is there for sustained, minty fresh breath that does not involve ingesting microplastics? (Mints don’t work that great imo, the freshness wears off too fast. Gum was my go-to. Now what is left?)

  • tottle@lemmy.caOPEnglish
    42·
    2 days ago

    If you’re out hiking and forage for spruce/pine resin directly from the source: it’s still plastic.

    There’s such a thing as naturally occurring plastic? I’m sure that’s not as bad for you though, right?

    As far as an alternative goes for minty breath: nothing stops you from cutting out the middleman and chewing on mint leaves directly.

    That’s an interesting idea.

    • 🌞 Alexander Daychilde 🌞@lemmy.worldEnglish
      213·
      2 days ago

      There’s such a thing as naturally occurring plastic? I’m sure that’s not as bad for you though, right?

      Cyanide is “natural”. Not everything natural is “good” and not everything artificial is “bad”.

    • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.socialEnglish
      10·
      2 days ago

      To my understanding (though admittedly I’m not like a materials scientist or anything so take this with a grain of salt), “plastic” is a somewhat fuzzy term, the things it generally refers to are artificial polymers, but there are also a lot of naturally occurring polymers used in biology, and it’s not like chemicals care if they’re made by humans or not. One could call naturally occurring polymer materials plastic, but if you did that, you would have to say that, for example, things like wood and insect shells are made of plastic, which isn’t really how people generally use that word. Naturally occurring ones are probably less likely to create “microplastic” type issues though because there has generally been enough time for stuff to evolve to break those materials down, whereas purely artificial ones are too recent for that.

      • frongt@lemmy.zipEnglish
        41·
        2 days ago

        Yeah, the natural stuff isn’t really what we call “plastic”, and it does break down better. The synthetic stuff is much more durable, which is the problem.