[Investigation of sulfonamides and tetracyclines antibiotics in soils from various vegetable fields]

The occurrence and distribution of 9 selected antibiotics, that involved with oxytetracycline (OTC), tetracycline (TC), chlortetracycline (CTC), sulfamethazine (SM2), sulfadiazine (SDZ), sulfamerazine (SMR), sulfameter, (SMT), sulfamethoxazole (SMZ) and sulfadimethoxine (SDM), were screened at 14 typical vegetable fields located in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Huizhou, Dongguan regions,with high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Data showed that almost all soil samples were unavoidably contaminated with antibiotics. The sum concentration of 3 tetracyclines (TCs) and 6 sulfonamides (SAs) in soils ranged from undetected to 242.6 microg/kg and 33.3 to 321.4 microg/kg respectively, while the medium concentrations were 84.8 microg/kg of tetracyclines and 121 microg/kg of sulfonamides. The individual detectable probability of the two groups of antibiotics ranged from 19.35% to 96.77% (TCs) and from 25.81% to 93.50% (SAs). TC, SMZ, SMT and SM2 were more abundant in soil among the selected antibiotics. The study also suggested that the total amount of both TCs and SAs in different vegetable fields ranked as hoggery vegetable field > non-pollution vegetable field > routine vegetable field > greenfood vegetable field, and there should exist some relationship between vegetable planting and antibiotics amount in soil which was related to different fertilization, irrigation and vegetable species. The concentrations of the selected antibiotics are comparable to those reported from the other countries in the world, but the detectable probability of the antibiotics in our study site is higher than that from the reference data. More attention should be paid to antibiotics pollution of soil in vegetable fields.