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Artificial sweeteners are escaping into the natural world, study shows
Though you might be helping your body by swapping out sugar for artificial sweeteners, it turns out one particular compound has an untold effect on aquatic ecosystems.
More than ever we are aware of our effect on planet Earth, whether that be through the products we make or the natural resources we pull from nature. One major area of interest is bodies of water, which are already packed full of nasty human-made chemicals and millions of plastic straws.
Artificial sweeteners have one major effect on the environment
In a recently published study in the Springer Link Journal, researchers from the University of Floridas Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience delved into the interesting world of artificial sweeteners.
Artificial sweeteners have already been a massive talking point online, though largely because a minority of TikTok health nuts seem to think they cause cancer. That conspiracy theory has been debunked over and over again.
Though such sweeteners have been a hit in the health community, sucralose is becoming a significant issue for microscopic organisms in aquatic ecosystems.
We can’t break down sucralose, and a lot of microorganisms can’t break it down, either, because it’s a really tough molecule that doesn’t degrade easily. So there are a lot of questions about how it is affecting the environment and whether its something that could impact our microbial communities, said study co-author Tracey Schafer.
In her study, Schafer and her team looked at the interaction between sucralose, which is found in most zero-sugar products, an aquatic photosynthetic bacteria called cyanobacteria, and algae called diatoms.
Such tiny organisms account for over 30% of the primary food production in marine environments. Of course, by disturbing one link in the chain, the potential for community collapse is increased.
What they found was troubling
Water samples were taken from both a freshwater site and a brackish water site in Florida before being exposed to samples of sucralose.
Through their study, co-author Amelia Westmoreland found: There is the potential that the freshwater communities might be mistaking sucralose for a nutrient, for a sugar that they can use as food.”
While cyanobacteria increased when samples were exposed to sucralose, diatoms showed a decreased population following exposure. This chaotic increase and decrease could pose an issue, especially in freshwater environments.
“Sucraloses ability to both increase and decrease microbial community populations could potentially threaten a naturally balanced ecosystem,” Westmoreland said. Extreme examples of how this could play out are the diatom community could disappear, and the other extreme is this community could completely overtake everything else.”
Schafer concluded that their study was a “good first step” in understanding the effect of artificial sweeteners on the environment and aquatic communities.
Considering the fact that sucralose can easily escape wastewater treatment processing, more research is desperately needed.
