Occurrence of 13 veterinary drugs in animal manure-amended soils in Eastern China
Introduction
Veterinary antimicrobial drugs are biologically active substances designed to kill microbes or inhibit their growth. In modern animal agriculture, most veterinary drugs fed to animals are poorly absorbed in the animal gut and up to 90% of them may be excreted either as a parent compound or in a partially metabolized form (Tolls, 2011). Veterinary drugs have the potential to enter the environment through animal manure fertilizers and can persist in soils for a long time (Förster et al., 2009). An increasing number of reports show a rise in the occurrence and distribution of veterinary drugs in excrement and environment in various countries throughout the world (Manzetti and Ghisi, 2014). Moreover, veterinary drugs may be taken up by crop plants from manure-amended soils and can be transported to ditches, streams and rivers via runoff and drain flow to groundwater via leaching (Boonsaner and Hawker, 2015, Blackwell et al., 2009).
With the increase in use of veterinary antibacterial drugs in animal production, there is a growing concern that excreted drugs have potentials to encourage the selection of antimicrobial resistance and spread in the environment (Heuer et al., 2011). The applications of veterinary antibacterials as growth promoters in animal feeds are now strictly regulated in various countries and even totally prohibited in the European Union since 2006 and in the United States (Alban et al., 2008, Food and Drug Administration, 2003). But this practice still continues in other countries including China which is one of the world's largest producers and exporters of animal products. Large quantities of manure containing various antibacterials are produced and stored in manure pits for subsequent application or applied immediately to land (Boxall, 2008). However, only a few studies on occurrence and fate of veterinary drugs in manure-amended soil have been done in China (Hu et al., 2010, Ostermann et al., 2013, Li et al., 2014). Therefore, limited information is available on the presence and distribution of veterinary drugs in the various layers of manure-amended soil.
The present study was designed to investigate the occurrence of tetracyclines (TCs), sulfonamides (SAs), fluoroquinolones (FQs), cyromazine (CY) and florfenicol (FF) at three soil depths of 0–20, 20–40 and 40–60 cm collected from vegetable fields that used animal manure as fertilizer. To our knowledge, veterinary drugs as a source of environmental pollution have been largely ignored in China. This work embodies the first widespread investigation on the occurrence of important classes of veterinary compounds in the soil, especially in deeper soil in Eastern China. The results could provide useful information for assessing the impacts or potential risks of veterinary drugs to ecosystems and for proper handling of antibiotic-containing manure.
Section snippets
Chemicals
Sulfadiazine (SDZ), sulfamethoxazole (SMX), sulfamethazine (SMZ), sulfaquinoxaline (SQX), sulfadoxine (SDX), chlortetracycline (CTC), oxytetracycline (OTC), tetracycline (TC), doxycycline (DOX), florfenicol (FF), enrofloxacin (ERFX), ciprofloxacin (CPFX) and cyromazine (CY) were obtained from Dr. Ehrenstorfer Gmbh (Augsburg, Germany). Formic acid, methanol and acetonitrile (HPLC/MS-grade) were purchased from ROE Scientific INC (Newark, USA). Ultrapure water was prepared with a Milli-Q water
Occurrence of selected veterinary drugs in three soil layers
This study determined the occurrence of veterinary drugs including five SAs, four TCs, two FQs, one CY and FF in soil from vegetable fields at 0–20, 20–40 and 40–60 cm deep from Jiangsu Province of East China. Among 69 soil samples, the positive detection frequency for antimicrobials in soil was 83%, 91% and 87% at 0–20, 20–40 and 40–60 cm depths, respectively. The overall detection rates of CY were 74%, 74% and 43% at different soil depths, respectively; SAs were 30%, 35% and 35%,
Conclusions
This study provided an overview on the occurrence of 13 veterinary drugs in animal manure-amended soils at depths of 0–20, 20–40 and 40–60 cm in Jiangsu Province in Eastern China. The results showed that more than 80% of the sampled soils were contaminated by the selected compounds at three soil depths. As was expected, animal waste especially those from poultry production can act as an important non-point source of veterinary drug residues in soils. The detection rates of these compounds in
Acknowledgements
This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants No 21307044 and No 31302009) and the Special Public Project of Ministry of Environmental Protection of China (200809092A).
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