“since sucralose mimics sugar but has no nutritional value, another one of our concerns is that animal feeding habits could be altered,” Jeremy Morgan says. “the effect of such an event on plant and animal populations is unclear.”
The team discovered that similar research in Sweden showed sucralose present in waters there. After learning that no research had been done outside of Europe, Mead began to plan for more test sites. “It doesn’t just come from Wilmington,” he says. Eventually researchers would find the artificial sweetener in the warm waters of the Florida Keys and Miami. “We also found sucralose in the Gulf Stream.” This confirmed that the substance is not broken down easily by the body or in the environment. Although a good deal is known about the influence of molecular structure on toxicity – much less is known about the role and influence that molecular structure plays in the environmental persistence of a chemical. So, using photochemistry, Mead and the team decided to test the breakdown of sucralose. There are two types of photodegradation: direct and indirect. In the process of direct photochemistry, a molecule absorbs light, and the light breaks the molecule’s chemical bonds. In the case of indirect Photo illustration
photochemistry, something else absorbs
Arts & sciences page 9