Sorption, Fate, and Mobility of Sulfonamides in Soils

• Published in: Water, air, and soil pollution air, and soil pollution, 2011-06, Vol.218 (1-4), p.49-61
• Main Authors: Fan, Zhaosheng, Casey, Francis X. M, Hakk, Heldur, Larsen, Gerald L, Khan, Eakalak
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: animal manure management; Animal manures; Antibiotics; Applied sciences; Aquaculture; Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution; batch systems; Chloride; Climate Change/Climate Change Impacts; Domestic animals; Earth and Environmental Science; effluents; Environment; Environmental monitoring; Exact sciences and technology; Experiments; fate and transport models; Hydrogeology; Laboratories; Manures; Metabolites; miscible displacement; Mobility; Moisture content; Molecular weight; Organic matter; Organic soils; partition coefficients; Pollution; soil; Soil columns; Soil contamination; soil organic matter; Soil Science & Conservation; Soil sciences; Soil testing; Soil water; Soils; Sorption; Stainless steel; Statistical analysis; Stochasticity; Sulfamethazine; Sulfonamides; Water Quality/Water Pollution
• ISSN: 0049-6979; 1573-2932
• DOI: 10.1007/s11270-010-0623-6

Sulfonamides (SAs) are one of the broadly used antibiotics in domestic animal operations and have a notable potential of entering the environment through animal manure management practices. In this study, sulfamethazine (SMZ) was used as a prototype to study the sorption, fate, and transport of SAs in soil–water systems using batch and miscible-displacement experiments. Sulfamethazine was degraded to a polar metabolite (PM). The batch experiments indicated that the linear sorption partitioning coefficient (K d) values for the PM ranged from 7.5 to 206.2 L kg−1. Strong relationships between the sorption of PM and various soil fractions and organic matter were also observed. The miscible-displacement experiments showed that 33–70% of SMZ was degraded within 6 h during transport in the soil columns. Also, 69–99.7% of SMZ and PM were recovered in the effluents suggesting their high mobility. Also, the simultaneous degradation, sorption, and transport of SMZ and PM were described using a two-site chemical nonequilibrium fate and transport model, using the K d values obtained from the batch experiments. The parameters of this model were uniquely estimated using a global optimization strategy, the stochastic ranking evolutionary strategy.