The Effect of Artificial Sweeteners on Aquatic Biomes

                                     ABSTRACT

Large amounts of artificial sweeteners have been found in Sweden in wastewater. This could be a problem if some organisms benefit from the sweeteners and overpopulate, while other organisms may die from sweetener contamination. The purpose of this experiment was to determine whether the artificial sweeteners are a danger for the environment. The hypothesis was that the artificial sweeteners would have a negative effect on the growth of the organisms. First the bacteria were placed in culture tubes, the diatoms were put in a flask, and the daphnia were placed, as eggs, in a tank. All of these organisms were left to grow in the water for one week. Then a concentration of 0.008 µg of each sweetener, sucralose, saccharine, and aspartame, was added to test three trials of each for each organism. The organisms were given a week to grow while exposed to the sweeteners. The bacteria and the diatoms were measured using a spectrophotometer. The living number of daphnia was measured. Then the light absorbance of all the tests was measured, and analyzed using ANOVA and Post Hoc Tukey tests. The research hypothesis was rejected and the null hypothesis was accepted at the alpha value of 0.005. The mean difference between the control and sweeteners for each organism had little variance showing that the artificial sweeteners had no effect on organism growth.