The pollution and ecological risk characteristics of five typical antibiotics found in the surface water of the Liaohe River Basin (LRB) were analyzed and evaluated using solid-phase extraction and high-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. These results showed that macrolides have the highest average concentration of all antibiotics in the surface water of the LRB of 201.88 ng·L-1, followed by quinolones, trimethoprim, and sulfonamides with average concentrations of 113.40 ng·L-1, 93.93 ng·L-1, and 124.27 ng·L-1, respectively. Tetracycline demonstrated the lowest concentration at 24.37 ng·L-1. In addition, antibiotics pollution of the Daliao River is clearly identified as being higher than that of the Liaohe River, and the highest proportion of antibiotic pollution (49.1%) is found to come from human use according to a source apportionme0nt analysis. Relatively high levels of ecological risk are identified from Trimethoprim and Erythromycin-H2O concentrations, especially for cities such as Xinmin, Shenyang, and Anshan. The risk assessment indicates that surface water of the LRB faces high ecological risk and argues for greater attention to be paid to risk management and pollution controls.
Keywords: Liaohe River Basin; antibiotics; ecological risk assessment; pollution characteristics; surface water.