Analysis of Antibiotics in Groundwater: A Review

Antibiotics as emerging organic pollutants, which do harm to humans and the environment, have aroused widespread attention. The pollution status of antibiotics in groundwater has become a research hotspot. Antibiotics in groundwater mainly derive from the antibiotic production industry, medical and health departments, animal husbandry and aquaculture. The trace-level antibiotics in groundwater increase bacterial resistance, damage human health by reducing immunity, causing abnormal or allergic reaction, carcinogenesis, teratogenesis and mutagenesis. There are various detection techniques for antibiotics in groundwater. For example, enzyme linked immunosorbent assay is usually applied to screen antibiotic contamination. However, Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry is rarely used, due to complicated processes. Capillary Chromatography detection technology has the advantages of low sample consumption and low analysis cost, but the poor reproducibility is its weakness. Liquid Chromatography has been widely used, among which Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry is the most commonly used detection technique with high sensitivity, low detection limit and high efficiency. Many studies have reported occurrences of antibiotics in groundwater in many countries. The detected concentrations range from 1 to 104 ng/L, and the detected types are mainly sulfonamides, tetracyclines, quinolones and macrolides antibiotics. Antibiotics in groundwater systems undergo a series of migration and transformation behaviours, such as adsorption, hydrolysis, photolysis and biodegradation. The main research direction for the future, including establishment of perfect detection methods and pretreatment technologies, comprehensive groundwater pollution investigation, analysis of antibiotics metabolites and its toxicity, treatment of antibiotics contamination are also discussed in this paper.