Occurrence and ecological risk assessment of fluoroquinolone antibiotics in hospital waste of Lahore, Pakistan

In the present study, wastewater and sludge samples of two major hospitals of Lahore, Pakistan were analyzed by developing an HPLC-UV method for the possible occurrence of five frequently used fluoroquinolone antibiotics i.e. ofloxacin, ciprofloxacin, sparfloxacin, moxifloxacin and gemifloxacin. The highest detected concentration was for moxifloxacin in both wastewater (224 μg/L) and sludge samples (219 μg/kg. The highest concentration of ofloxacin, ciprofloxacin, sparfloxacin and gemifloxacin were found to be 66, 18, 58 and 0.2 μg/L respectively. Risk quotient (RQ) was also calculated based on maximum measured concentrations and the RQ values were very high particularly for ofloxacin and ciprofloxacin. The maximum RQ values for ofloxacin against Vibrio fisheri, Pseudomonas putida, fish, Daphnia, Green algae and Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata were 3300, 66,000, 124, 46, 3300 and 6000, respectively. In case of ciprofloxacin, RQ values were found to be 1750 and 3500 against green algae and Microcystis aeruginosa, respectively.