Abstract
Antibiotics are emerging contaminants and widely used in human healthcare, livestock, and aquaculture. The toxicity posed by antibiotics and their mixtures in sediments depends on their bioavailability. Now, the bioavailability of organic materials can be determined accurately by the diffusive gradients in thin films (DGT) technique. This technique was used for the first time ever in this study to evaluate in detail the integral toxicity of antibiotics in sediments to aquatic biota. Zhelin Bay was selected as a case study, because it is the largest mariculture area in eastern Guangdong, South China. Two antibiotics, chlortetracycline (CTC) (A) and sulfachlorpyridazine (SCP), were detected at average concentrations of 2.83 and 1.14 ng/ml, respectively. The other fifteen antibiotics were undetectable. The single risk assessment based on the risk quotient (RQ) of CTC and SCP shows that a relatively low risk has occurred. After this careful assessment of probabilistic ecotoxicological risks, the combined toxicity of antibiotic mixtures (CTC and SCP) clearly indicates that the toxicity probability of surface sediments to aquatic organisms was relatively low (0.23%).
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Acknowledgements
We thank anonymous experts for their insightful reviews that helped greatly improve the quality of this paper. We also gratefully acknowledge the Hainan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (422MS155), Innovation Group Project of Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai) (No.311021006), National Natural Science Foundation of China (41977365) and Central Public-interest Scientific Institution Basal Research Fund, CAFS (NO. 2020TD15).
Funding
This work was supported by the Hainan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (422MS155), the Innovation Group Project of Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai) (No.311021006), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41977365) and the Central Public-interest Scientific Institution Basal Research Fund, CAFS (NO.2020TD15).
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Y-GG: Methodology and Writing—Original draft preparation, Data curation, Supervision, Conceptualization, Visualization, Writing—reviewing and editing. Y-PG: Investigation and Validation. S-JJ: Writing—reviewing and editing. RWJ: Writing—reviewing and editing. Y-FY: Investigation and Validation.
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Gu, YG., Gao, YP., Jiang, SJ. et al. Ecotoxicological risk of antibiotics and their mixtures to aquatic biota with the DGT technique in sediments. Ecotoxicology 32, 536–543 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-023-02656-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-023-02656-5