Unveiling antibiotic contamination in surface water: A study of the Huaihe River Basin's Huaibei Plain, a significant Chinese herbal medicine planting region

Haixin Wu; Ruijia Liu; Guijian Liu; Miao He; Muhammad Arif; Fengming Li; Wen Si; Zhen Yue; Hao Hu

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.173125

Unveiling antibiotic contamination in surface water: A study of the Huaihe River Basin's Huaibei Plain, a significant Chinese herbal medicine planting region

Sci Total Environ. 2024 May 9:933:173125. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.173125. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Haixin Wu¹, Ruijia Liu², Guijian Liu², Miao He², Muhammad Arif³, Fengming Li⁴, Wen Si², Zhen Yue², Hao Hu⁵

Affiliations

¹ School of Life Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Anhui Province 230026, China; CAS-Key Laboratory of Crust-Mantle Materials and the Environments, School of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, PR China. Electronic address: wuhaixin@mail.ustc.edu.cn.
² CAS-Key Laboratory of Crust-Mantle Materials and the Environments, School of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, PR China.
³ Department of Soil and Environmental Sciences, MNS University of Agriculture, 60000 Multan, Pakistan.
⁴ Anhui Hemei Environmental Technology Co., Ltd., Anhui Province 242099, China.
⁵ CAS-Key Laboratory of Crust-Mantle Materials and the Environments, School of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, PR China. Electronic address: 1697339450@qq.com.

PMID: 38734095
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.173125

Abstract

The abuse of antibiotics has caused the accumulation of antibiotic residues in environmental media, threatening the ecosystem and human health. Many studies on the distribution of aqueous antibiotics have been reported. However, the pollution status of antibiotics in the environment in Chinese herbal medicine planting areas is rarely comprehensively clarified, resulting in the lack of updated pollution data and conducive suggestions for ecological cultivation and sustainable development of Chinese herbal medicine. Thus, we comprehensively investigated the distribution, profiles, sources, and risks of the antibiotics in the surface water of an important tributary of the Huaihe River Basin, located in Bozhou City, a significant Chinese herbal medicine planting region. Solid-phase extraction coupled with an ultra-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometer (SPE-UPLC-MS) was utilized to detect the antibiotics in the water. 27 kinds of antibiotics were identified with total concentrations ranging from 75.01 to 1737.99 ng·L^-1, with doxycycline (DC) and doxycycline hydrochloride (DCH) possessed the highest concentration. And DC, DCH, oxilinic acid (OA), sulfamethoxazole (SMZ), clarithromycin (CLA), and roxithromycinum (ROX) were the main antibiotics detected in this basin. Correlation analysis and principal component analysis (PCA) indicated that animal husbandry was the primary source of antibiotics. Furthermore, the ecological risk assessment revealed that certain antibiotics could seriously threaten the survival of aquatic organisms, implying that local Chinese herbal medicines might be at similar growth risk. The drinking risk assessment showed that antibiotics in the water posed low risks for human, and children faced a greater drinking risk than adults. The study can help to facilitate the management of aqueous antibiotic pollution for the ecological cultivation and safe production of Chinese herbal medicine.

Keywords: Antibiotics; Chinese herbal medicine; Drinking risk; Ecological risk.