Quantitative study on the fate of antibiotic emissions in China

China, the largest producer and user of antibiotics in the world, discharges excessive amounts of these substances into the environment, without prior treatment. This results in ubiquitous distribution of these substances, as well as increased levels of drug-resistant bacteria, that will eventually cause unimaginable consequences to the environment and to humans. However, most of the research on antibiotics has focused on residue analysis of single medium such as wastewater and landfills. There is paucity of research that systematically investigates the fate of antibiotics after excretion, and specifically of end-treatment processes. In this paper, the fate of antibiotic emissions is systematically calculated. The results show that human and livestock feces account for 57.6% and 42.6% of the discharge of medicinal antibiotics and veterinary antibiotics, respectively. Of these feces types, pig feces accounted for 98.7% of antibiotic residues in livestock feces. The above conclusions can be used to clarify the direction of the tracking and supervision of antibiotic residues and provide new ideas for the treatment of antibiotics, especially their terminal removal.