Pharmaceuticals pollution of aquaculture and its management in China

With the rising of the aquaculture since the 1980s, China has become the only country that the output of aquaculture production exceeded the catches since 1997. However, the environmental contamination problems caused by application of pharmaceuticals in the aquaculture industry have been increasingly serious in recent years. This review summarized and discussed the studies on the pharmaceutical pollution in the aquaculture of China, and the research topics included distribution of sulfonamides in the coastal zone, characterization of residual antibiotics in aquaculture water in southeastern coast, pollution characterization of antibiotics in the Pearl River Delta, and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) existed in the Beijiang River. Countermeasures against pharmaceuticals pollution in aquaculture were addressed including rules released by the Chinese government (e.g., the Ministry of Agriculture). Issues on ecological prevention, vaccination prevention, drug prevention in aquaculture were further discussed. Some methods for remediation of polluted surface water in aquaculture, e.g., chemical oxidation, biological remediation, and photocatalytic degradation, were also introduced.