Distribution and potential risk assessment of antibiotic pollution in the main drinking water sources of Nanjing, China

The distribution character of 41 antibiotics belonging to 6 groups, sulfonamides (SAs), quinolones (QUs), tetracyclines (TCs), macrolides (MLs), penicillins (PLs), and chloramphenicol (CHL), was investigated in drinking water sources of Nanjing during 2017–2019. MLs (42.98%) were the most abundant category, followed by SAs (25.94%) and QUs (22.52%). The dominant antibiotic was ofloxacin (OFX) in Dec. 2017 (average concentration, 3.14 ng/L; range, ND–35.20 ng/L) and Nov. 2018 (2.16 ng/L, ND–12.26 ng/L), and sulfadiazine (SDZ) in Mar. 2019 (16.37 ng/L, ND–25.90 ng/L). For Dec. 2017, the total concentrations in Zhongshan Waterworks (S15) and Jinniushan Reservoir (S16) were significantly higher than the other sampling sites, which may be attributed to point source pollution. The ecological and human risk of the main antibiotics was assessed by risk quotients (RQs) and target hazard quotient (THQ), respectively. Most of the RQ values were below 0.1, except enrofloxacin (ERX, 0.11) and enoxacin (ENX, 0.62) in Dec. 2017, lomefloxacin (LOM, 0.14) in Nov. 2018, and LOM (0.28) and ERX (0.10) in Mar. 2019. This indicated that the risk of the target antibiotics to aquatic organisms in the 3 years was moderate or low level. Meanwhile, results of the THQ values showed that antibiotic exposure caused no risk to human health. This research provides scientific information for antibiotic pollution control and enriches environmental monitoring data in the drinking water sources.