Behaviour and fate of tetracycline in river and wetland waters on the Canadian Northern Great Plains

Abstract

Very little is known about the factors affecting the behaviour, degradation and persistence of tetracycline in sensitive Prairie freshwater aquatic systems in Canada. Reported are results of studies conducted for the first time of tetracycline behaviour in Prairie river and wetland waters. For comparison, studies were also conducted using distilled water as a control. Different amounts of spiked tetracycline (0, 50 and 80 percent) was adsorbed by distilled, river and wetland water, respectively. These different amounts are likely due to the differences in the matrixes of the three waters. In wetland water, the addition of EDTA generally promoted the release of tetracycline indicating that a portion of the tetracycline was bound to metal ions. Decreasing the pH of the wetland water led to increased adsorption of tetracycline suggesting either that tetracycline epimerizes or binds, by hydrogen bonding, to acidic portions of organic material in the water. However, in wetland water, a significant portion of the spiked tetracycline (≅ 50%) was irreversibly bound to the water matrix and was not released by adding EDTA and/or by varying the pH. In laboratory experiments, the t^1/2 of “free-form” tetracycline exposed to light (L⁺) in non-sterile waters was 32, 2 and 3 days in distilled, river and wetland water respectively, while in waters with no light exposure (L⁻), they were 83, 18 and 13 days. Similarly, t^1/2 of tetracycline in L⁺ sterile waters treatments was 9, 1 and 1 day for distilled, river and wetland water, respectively, and 18, 11 and 7 days in the L⁻. In the experiment conducted in natural sunlight, tetracycline t^1/2 in the presence of ultraviolet radiation (UV) treatments was 26, 17 and 18 min in distilled, river and wetland water and 39, 28 and 32 min in the absence of UV treatment. The combination of the effects of matrixes of the water, light and UV radiation therefore play a significant role in catalyzing the removal of tetracycline from different Prairie waters. In deep waters and in systems where sunlight is highly attenuated, the effects of light on tetracycline may be considerably reduced.

Keywords:

• Aquatic systems
• antibiotics
• fate and behavior
• mass spectrometry
• pharmaceuticals
• photolysis
• tetracycline
• ultraviolet radiation.

Acknowledgments

We thank Ken Supeene, George Swerhone and Randy Schmidt for technical assistance. The Institute for Wetland and Water Research of Ducks Unlimited is thanked for financial support and National Water Research Institute of Environment Canada for use of laboratory space and equipment.