Ontario’s Grand River tests highest in the world for artificial sweeteners

Apparently, Southwestern Ontarians drink a lot of diet soda pop.

A new study from Environment Canada and the University of Waterloo has revealed that as the Grand River meanders its way through southwestern Ontario towards Lake Erie, it accumulates enough artificial sweeteners along the way that the water it discharges into the lake every day is roughly the equivalent of between 80,000 and 190,000 cans of diet soda pop. According to the researchers, these "are the highest reported concentrations of these compounds in surface waters to date anywhere in the world."

These artificial sweeteners aren't coming as discharge from bottling plants, though. They're coming directly from the people who drink it.

This study, published in the online science journal PLOS ONE, points out that the chemicals used for artificial sweeteners — sucralose, cyclamate, saccharin and acesulfame — aren't processed by our bodies. They flow, unchanged, out of us, down the toilet and into water treatment plants. Even there, the chemicals usually make it through the treatment processes intact and get out into the river, where they persist in high concentrations despite the large volume of the water and all the biological processes that go on in the river.

Acesulfame, which usually shows up as 'acesulfame potassium' on diet food and drink packaging, can be easily detected in samples, and according to the study, exists in concentrations "up to several orders of magnitude above the detection limit over a distance of 300 km." This means that as the water flows down the river, which is about 280 kilometres long, the increase in concentration of the acesulfame can be used to locate pollution sources.

"Artificial sweeteners are an extremely powerful wastewater tracer, whether from wastewater effluent or from groundwater influenced by septic systems," study lead author John Spoelstra, who is a professor of biochemistry at the University of Waterloo and a groundwater quality researcher with Environment Canada, said in a statement.

Also, since we don't feed artificially-sweetened food to animals, it can show the difference between human waste and agricultural waste in the rivers and groundwater.

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However, beyond those specific benefits, this is very likely a very bad thing for the river, for anything that lives in it, and even for us.

There are plenty of studies out there now that argue the benefits and dangers of artificial sweeteners for us. The topic has been studied extensively, and continues to be studied. However, there is very little known about the environmental effects of these chemicals, or the chemicals they break down into (eventually). This study shows that since these chemicals persist in the water in high concentrations and for long distances away from the source, fish, plants and other organisms in the river experience long-term exposure. Given the concerns out there about what they might be doing to us, as we consume products made from them, an equal amount of concern should be shown for what these sweeteners might be doing after we're done with them.

(Photo courtesy: Wikimedia Commons, Spoelstra/Schiff/Brown/PLOS ONE)

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