Can Chewing Gum Kill You?

Most of us have been told, at one time or another, not to spit our wads of chewing gum out onto the grass or street.  Many people contend that spitting gum out is tantamount to littering.  I have been told that animals or birds may come to harm if they try to eat or otherwise encounter castoff gum.  I thought the latter argument a little silly until only a few days ago.  That’s when I watched a You Tube video of a person saving a hummingbird that had become hopelessly stuck to the lawn by a wad of discarded gum.  The man in the video spent considerable time fiddling before finally extricating the bird.

But what if gum could kill you outright?

Just this week, several news organizations from the United Kingdom, including the Guardian, carried a story about the death of a girl from Wales named Samantha Jenkins.   Samantha, died at the age of 19 after a sudden and inexplicable collapse, followed by convulsions, at her home in June of 2011.  The girl’s mother, Maria Morgan, pushed for four years to see an inquest into her daughter’s death.  The inquest, when it came, concluded that too much chewing gum might have contributed to the girl’s death.  The specific cause of death was identified as brain swelling (cerebral hypoxia).  The convulsions were triggered by a lack of salt, magnesium, and calcium in Samantha’s system.

Samantha Jenkins chewed Trident gum incessantly.  The pathologist who carried out the postmortem examination noted that he found “large lumps” of green mint chewing gum in her stomach.  Trident gum contains the artificial sweetener aspartame.  While most health authorities and regulating agencies have deemed aspartame as safe, some people believe that such artificial sweeteners may reduce the natural balance of such things as salt, magnesium, and calcium in a human body.

After reading the story about Samantha, I checked the label on my favored brand of chewing gum.  Honestly, that scared me a bit.  Out of about a dozen ingredients (including aspartame), “soy” was the only word you might use outside a chemistry lab.  The others seemed monosyllabic monsters with 12 arms and 13 eyes.

--Mitchell Hegman

Sources: The Guardian, Daily Mail, Mirror