engleski

Electric fields: what are they bad for?

In the pursuit of happiness, we extremely depend on electric energy. Thanks to a Croatian - Nikola Tesla, the human race has developed many ways to obtain it. However, and in spite of Tesla, to get it to the place we need it, currently there is only one option – transmission lines. Constructing, and expanding the power grid is among the fastest growing environmental pressures in urban areas of the world. Electric current that is transmitted through the power lines, however, creates a space in which all charged and/or polar molecules change their behavior – electric fields. Since most of life-depending, processes are based on precisely these kinds of molecules we investigated how man made electric fields affect organisms. We exposed aquatic protist to a range of electric fields in the lab and made an in situ survey on population dynamics of aquatic insects in the proximity of high voltage transmission lines. Exposure to electric fields resulted in: decrease in abundance, increase in stress enzyme activity, and change in morphology in protists. However, the exposure to the electric fields does not seem to bother aquatic insects that much.

Transmission lines, stress enzimes, superoxide dismutase, Euglena, Paramecium

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