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Biodegradation studies of N 4-acetylsulfapyridine and N 4-acetylsulfamethazine in environmental water by applying mass spectrometry techniques

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Abstract

This work evaluates the biodegradation of N 4-acetylsulfapyridine (AcSPY) and N 4-acetylsulfamethazine (AcSMZ), metabolites of two of the most commonly used sulfonamides (SAs) in human and veterinary medicine, respectively. Aerobic transformation in effluent wastewater was simulated using aerated fixed-bed bioreactors. No visible changes in concentration were observed in the AcSMZ reactor after 90 days, whereas AcSPY was fully degraded after 32 days of experiment. It was also demonstrated that AcSPY transformed back to its parent compound sulfapyridine (SPY). The environmental presence of these two metabolites in wastewater effluent had been previously investigated and confirmed, together with three more SA acetylated metabolites and their corresponding parent compounds, in 18 different wastewater treatment plants in Hesse (Germany). Sulfamethoxazole (SMX) and SPY were the two SAs detected most frequently (90% and 89% of the samples, respectively) and in the highest concentrations (682 ng L−1 for SMX and 532 ng L−1 for SPY). To conclude, hazard quotients were calculated whenever toxicity data were available. None of the SAs studied posed an environmental risk.

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Acknowledgments

This work has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the projects CEMAGUA (CGL2007-64551/HID) and SCARCE (Consolider Ingenio 2010 CSD2009-00065) and by the Spanish Ministry of Rural and Marine Environment Project VIECO (009/RN08/01.1). The authors would like to thank M. Bernhard for their uninterested help. MJ García acknowledges AGAUR (Generalitat de Catalunya, Spain) for economic support through an FI pre-doctoral grant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Chemistry, IDAEA-CSIC, Jordi Girona 18-26, 08034, Barcelona, Spain

    María Jesús García-Galán, Silvia Díaz-Cruz & Damiá Barceló

  2. University of Applied Sciences Fresenius, Limburger Straße 2, 65510, Idstein, Germany

    Tobias Frömel, Jutta Müller, Manuela Peschka & Thomas Knepper

  3. Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA), Parc Científic i Tecnològic de la Universitat de Girona, C/ Emili Grahit, 101 Edifici H2O, 17003, Girona, Spain

    Damiá Barceló

  4. King Saud University, P.O. Box 2455, Riyadh, 11451, Saudi Arabia

    Damiá Barceló

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  1. María Jesús García-Galán
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Correspondence to Thomas Knepper.

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García-Galán, M.J., Frömel, T., Müller, J. et al. Biodegradation studies of N 4-acetylsulfapyridine and N 4-acetylsulfamethazine in environmental water by applying mass spectrometry techniques. Anal Bioanal Chem 402, 2885–2896 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-012-5751-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-012-5751-y

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