Surface Runoff and Transport of Sulfonamide Antibiotics and Tracers on Manured Grassland

Abstract

Despite their common use in animal production the environmental fate of the veterinary sulfonamide antibiotics after excretion is only poorly understood. We performed irrigation experiments to investigate the transport of these substances with surface runoff on grassland. Liquid manure from pigs treated with sulfadimidine was spiked with sulfadiazine, sulfathiazole, the herbicide atrazine (2-chloro-4-ethylamino-6-isopropylamino-1,3,5-triazine), and the conservative tracer bromide and spread onto eight plots. Four plots received the same amounts of the spiked substances in aqueous solution (controls). Apart from the application matrix we varied the time between application and irrigation. Manure increased the runoff volume up to six times compared with the controls. It seemed that manure enhanced the runoff by sealing the soil surface. On manured plots the relative antibiotic concentrations in runoff were higher than on the controls, reaching an average of 0.3% (sulfadiazine), 0.8% (sulfathiazole), and 1.4% (sulfadimidine) of the input concentrations after a 1-d contact time. The corresponding values on the controls were 0.16% for sulfadiazine and 0.08% for sulfathiazole. After 3 d, the maximum values on the manured plots were even higher, whereas they had fallen below the limit of quantification on the controls. As a consequence, the sulfonamide losses were 10 to 40 times larger on the manured plots. The relative mobility of the sulfonamides on the control plots followed the trend expected from their chromatographic separation but the opposite was found on the manured plots. Hence it is important to consider explicitly the physical and chemical effects of manure when assessing the environmental fate of sulfonamides.

Adsorption and reaction of sulfachloropyridazine sulfonamide antibiotic on a high silica mordenite: A structural and spectroscopic combined study

“…The environmental behaviour of sulfa drugs is mainly characterised by the acidic nature of their sulfonamide group that may occur as anionic form under neutral/slightly basic pH conditions in soilwater system [14]. Some studies on the mobility of sulfonamides in soils demonstrated their attitude to be leached along the soil profile [15] because of the net negative charge always present on the surface of soil particles [16,17]. When the antibiotic administration takes place directly in water, for instance in the case of aquaculture treatment, soil depurative and filtering activity is by-passed and the sulfonamide effect on the environment is even worse [18].…”

Effect of Sulfadiazine-Contaminated Pig Manure on the Abundances of Genes and Transcripts Involved in Nitrogen Transformation in the Root-Rhizosphere Complexes of Maize and Clover

“…Sulfonamides, including sulfadiazine (SDZ), belong to one of the major groups of veterinary drugs and are mainly used in pigs (10). Sulfonamides are poorly adsorbed in the animal gut; consequently, they are excreted unchanged in urine and feces (1,12,16,26) and reach the soil ecosystem via manuring.…”

Sources identification of antibiotic pollution combining land use information and multivariate statistics

“…Therefore, the significant positive correlation between TC and developed area indicated that human sources might be a major contributor of TC. Studies have suggested that antibiotics in soil can be released into surface water through overland flow (Burkhardt et al 2005;Kreuzig et al 2005;Kay et al 2005;Davis et al 2006;Kim et al 2010). In barren land, the antibiotics attached to soil particles were easily transported to the river because of the lack of vegetation cover (Jent et al 2013).…”