Method Development and Application To Determine Potential Plant Uptake of Antibiotics and Other Drugs in Irrigated Crop Production Systems

Abstract

Studies have shown the detection of emerging contaminants (ECs), of which pharmaceuticals are a subset, in surface waters across the United States. The objective of this study was to develop methods, and apply them, to evaluate the potential for food chain transfer when EC-containing waters are used for crop irrigation. Greenhouse experiments were performed in which select food crops were irrigated with water spiked with three antibiotics. Field experiments, at two different sites, were conducted. Select crops were irrigated with wastewater effluent known to contain ECs, EC-free well water, and Colorado River water containing trace-level ECs. The results of the greenhouse studies show the potential for uptake of one or more of the antibiotics evaluated, albeit at very low levels. In those food crops watered with wastewater effluent, only an industrial flavoring agent, N,N'-dimethylphenethylamine (DMPEA), was consistently found. None of the evaluated contaminants were found in crops irrigated with Colorado River water.

Comparison of accelerated solvent extraction and quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged and safe method for extraction and determination of pharmaceuticals in vegetables

“…The former two methods have been shown to effectively extract pharmaceuticals from plant tissues [1,10,17,[38][39][40]. In this study we began with ASE and ULE methods to extract pharmaceuticals from celery tissues using acetonitrile.…”

Plant uptake of pharmaceutical and personal care products from recycled water and biosolids: a review

“…However, this cleanup procedure may also remove PPCPs with high or medium hydrophobicity and should only be used when the target compounds are highly hydrophilic, such as polar antibiotics (Dolliver et al, 2007;Jones-Lepp et al, 2010). Due to the wide range of hydrophobicity of PPCPs, solid-phase extraction (SPE) has emerged as the method of choice as a clean-up procedure (Table 1).…”

“…For sample cleanup, liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) with hexane was used to remove undesirable hydrophobic compounds, such as chlorophyllic, fatty and waxy materials (Jones-Lepp et al, 2010). However, this cleanup procedure may also remove PPCPs with high or medium hydrophobicity and should only be used when the target compounds are highly hydrophilic, such as polar antibiotics (Dolliver et al, 2007;Jones-Lepp et al, 2010).…”

Concomitant uptake of antimicrobials and Salmonella in soil and into lettuce following wastewater irrigation

“…Vegetables commonly consumed raw, such as tomatoes (Sabourin et al, 2012), cucumber (Shenker et al, 2011), broccoli (Wu et al, 2012), onion (Kumar et al, 2005) and carrots (Boxall et al, 2006;Jones-Lepp et al, 2010), have been shown to accumulate antimicrobials. Human pathogens can internalize in plants through root or leaf uptake.…”