Global antibiotic concentration in aquatic environments

Site-wise comparison data of antibiotic residues in aquatic environments and human bodies were collated from published studies using the keyword “antibiotics” or “pharmaceuticals or pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs)” as keywords combined with “environment”, “occurrence”, “distribution”, “risk assessment”, “water”, “sediment”, “aquaculture”, “fish”, “organism”, “human”, “blood”, “urine”, “wastewater”, and “residues”. The inclusion of PPCPs-related keywords in our search strategy was intended to extract relevant antibiotic data from studies that treat antibiotics as a subset of PPCPs. This approach allows us to gather comprehensive data on antibiotic contamination, even from studies that focus on PPCPs more generally, thereby providing a richer understanding of the full scope of environmental antibiotic pollution. Some studies, including those published in languages other than English, were also considered to ensure a comprehensive review of the available data. Studies on the metabolism of antibiotics in the environment were not included due to the limited availability of relevant research in this area. Unfortunately, categories and the number of antibiotics compounds reported were not always consistent. According to the published papers concerning measured environmental concentrations (MECs) of antibiotics, four categories of frequently detected antibiotics were selected, including fluoroquinolones (FQs, 12 chemicals), sulfonamides (SAs, 10 chemicals), macrolides (MLs, 7 chemicals) and tetracyclines (TCs, 4 chemicals) (Table 1). In addition, because trimethoprim is commonly used as a synergist with SAs, its concentration in the published literature was calculated alongside SAs in this study. In total, 162 studies on water, 59 studies on sediment and 130 studies on aquatic organisms in 33 countries were identified and analyzed. The data set included 4 categories antibiotics and 33 chemicals from about 1,214 locations worldwide.