Occurrence of veterinary antibiotics in animal wastewater and surface water around farms in Jiangsu Province, China

The objective of this investigation was to obtain a broad profile of veterinary antibiotics residues in animal wastewater and surface water around large-scale livestock and poultry farms in Jiangsu Province of China. Therefore, 53 samples collected from 27 large-scale animal farms in 11 cities and counties of Jiangsu Province in 2009, were monitored for 10 selected veterinary antibiotics using solid phase extraction and high performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC/ESI-MS/MS) techniques. Ten veterinary antibiotics were found in animal wastewaters, eight antibiotics were detected in pond waters, and animal farm-effluents and river water samples were contaminated by nine antibiotics. The most frequently detected antibiotics were sulfamethazine (75%), oxytetracycline (64%), tetracycline (60%), sulfadiazine (55%) and sulfamethoxazole (51%) which were detected with a maximum concentration of 211, 72.9, 10.3, 17.0 and 63.6 μg L−1, respectively. The maximum concentration of 0.55 μg L−1 for cyromazine, 3.67 μg L−1 for chlortetracycline, 0.63 μg L−1 for sulfadoxine, 39.5 μg L−1 for doxycycline and 0.64 μg L−1 for sulfaquinoxaline were determined in the collected samples. In general, the maximum concentration of the selected veterinary antibiotics was detected in animal wastewaters except for chlortetracycline in animal farm-effluents. In addition, residue levels of selected veterinary antibiotics in animal wastewater and surface water around the farms were related to animal species and have a high spatial variation.

Research highlights
► Develop a simultaneous detection method for 10 antibiotics in animal wastewater and surface water.
► Research demonstrates the animal wastewater is a major pollution source of veterinary antibiotic.
► The TCs and SAs show higher detected frequency in swine farms than poultry and dairy farms.
► Residue levels of antibiotics have high spatial variation among north, central and south Jiangsu.