Occurrence and Removal of Veterinary Antibiotics in Livestock Wastewater Treatment Plants, South Korea

Abstract

In this study, livestock wastewater treatment plants in South Korea were monitored to determine the characteristics of influent and effluent wastewater, containing four types of veterinary antibiotics (sulfamethazine, sulfathiazole, chlortetracycline, oxytetracycline), and the removal efficiencies of different treatment processes. Chlortetracycline had the highest average influent concentration (483.7 μg/L), followed by sulfamethazine (251.2 μg/L), sulfathiazole (230.8 μg/L) and oxytetracycline (25.7 μg/L), at five livestock wastewater treatment plants. Sulfathiazole had the highest average effluent concentration (28.2 μg/L), followed by sulfamethazine (20.8 μg/L) and chlortetracycline (11.5 μg/L), while no oxytetracycline was detected. For veterinary antibiotics in the wastewater, a removal efficiency of at least 90% was observed with five types of treatment processes, including a bio-ceramic sequencing batch reactor, liquid-phase flotation, membrane bioreactor, bioreactor plus ultrafiltration (BIOSUF) and bio best bacillus systems. Moreover, this study evaluated the removal efficiency via laboratory-scale experiments on the conventional contaminants, such as organic matter, nitrogen, phosphorus and veterinary antibiotics. This was done using the hydraulic retention time (HRT), under three temporal conditions (14 h, 18 h, 27 h), using the anaerobic–anoxic–oxic (A2O) process, in an attempt to assess the combined livestock wastewater treatment process where the livestock wastewater is treated until certain levels of water quality are achieved, and then the effluent is discharged to nearby sewage treatment plants for further treatment. The removal efficiencies of veterinary antibiotics, especially oxytetracycline and chlortetracycline, were 86.5–88.8% and 87.9–90.8%, respectively, exhibiting no significant differences under various HRT conditions. The removal efficiency of sulfamethazine was at least 20% higher at HRT = 27 h than at HRT = 14 h, indicating that sulfamethazine was efficiently removed in the A2O process with increased HRT. This study is expected to promote a comprehensive understanding of the behavior and removal of veterinary antibiotics in the livestock wastewater treatment plants of South Korea.

Electroporation as an Efficacy Potentiator for Antibiotics With Different Target Sites

“…For any application outside clinical and veterinary medicine, addition of antibiotics is generally problematic due to the involved health risks and/or the resulting environmental burden. However, wastewaters from hospitals and livestock farms are already inherently contaminated with clinical and veterinary antibiotics, respectively ( Diwan et al, 2013 ; Kim et al, 2020 ), as well as with a broad range of bacteria including strains resistant to different antibiotics ( Hocquet et al, 2016 ). As a result, downstream wastewater treatment plants where all these antibiotics and bacteria accumulate become hotbeds for cross-acquisition of bacterial antibiotic resistance and for release of resistance genes into the environment, where they can further contribute to the spread of resistance ( Rizzo et al, 2013 ).…”

Absorption–Translocation of Veterinary Antibiotics in Rice Plants Introduced with Irrigation Water

“…Antibiotic use for human and veterinary purposes increased globally by 65% between 2000 and 2015 [1]. VA production and use in South Korea has steadily increased, with 938 tons sold in 2018 [2]. VAs have been indiscriminately used in animal feed for the past five decades to increase and ensure profits with negligible environmental considerations [3].…”

Sweep-Out of Tigecycline, Chlortetracycline, Oxytetracycline, and Doxycycline from Water by Carbon Nanoparticles Derived from Tissue Waste

“…The PhCs pollution keeps increasing because of the modern life necessities for infectious treatments and agricultural, poultry, and livestock farming productivity [ 7 , 8 , 9 ]. The high-performance liquid chromatography was employed for determining chlortetracycline (CTCN) [ 10 , 11 , 12 ], tigecycline (TGCN) [ 13 ], oxytetracycline (OTCN) [ 14 , 15 ], and doxycycline (DXCN) [ 16 ]. In addition, these drugs have been determined via uv-vis spectrophotometry [ 17 , 18 , 19 ], and by high-performance liquid chromatography and spectrophotometry.…”