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Occurrence and distribution of antibiotics in multiple environmental media of the East River (Dongjiang) catchment, South China

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Abstract

The occurrence and distribution of 11 antibiotics in multiple environmental media including river water, suspended particle, sediment, and soil of the East River catchment, South China, were systematically characterized from multiple spatial (area and point) and temporal (seasonal variation and diurnal variation) scales. The results indicated that six to eight antibiotics were detected in these media. The predominant antibiotics and their concentrations varied with environment media because of the varied contamination sources, physicochemical properties of antibiotics, and media. For their spatial distribution, the river environment including water phase, suspended particles, and sediments showed a similar feature with the rule of C delta > C lower reach > C middle reach, which may be related to the industrial level and population density. However, the antibiotics in the soils showed a close relationship with the land use types. A diurnal variation of antibiotics at river sections was mainly affected by the tidal change and diurnal domestic sewage discharge feature. Source analysis indicated that domestic sewage was the main source for antibiotic contamination in the river, while irrigation and fertilization using river water and animal wastes were the main reasons for antibiotic contamination in the soils. However, antibiotics may be redistributed in different media in a catchment.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Knowledge Innovative Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KZCX2-YW-Q02-01), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41463011 and 41473118), the National Key Basic Research Program of China (2013CB956102), the BaGui Scholars Program Foundation (2014), and the Guangxi Natural Science Fund Project (Nos. 2015GXNSFBA139185 and 2016GXNSFAA380011).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Marine Sciences, Guangxi University, Nanning, China

    Ruijie Zhang, Ruiling Zhang, Yinghui Wang & Kefu Yu

  2. School of the Environment, Guangxi University, Nanning, China

    Ruiling Zhang

  3. State Key Laboratory of Organic Geochemistry, Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China

    Jun Li, Zhineng Cheng, Chunling Luo & Gan Zhang

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  1. Ruijie Zhang
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  2. Ruiling Zhang
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  3. Jun Li
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  5. Chunling Luo
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  6. Yinghui Wang
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  7. Kefu Yu
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  8. Gan Zhang
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Correspondence to Ruijie Zhang or Gan Zhang.

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Zhang, R., Zhang, R., Li, J. et al. Occurrence and distribution of antibiotics in multiple environmental media of the East River (Dongjiang) catchment, South China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 24, 9690–9701 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-017-8664-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-017-8664-7

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