REVIEW

Antibiotics in global rivers

¹ Beijing Key Laboratory of Farmland Soil Pollution Prevention and Remediation, College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, China Agricultural University Beijing 100193 China
² State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of All Material Fluxes in River Ecosystems, College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University Beijing 100871 China
³ The Key Laboratory of Water and Sediment Sciences, Ministry of Education Beijing 100871 China
⁴ CAS Key Laboratory of Urban Pollutant Conversion, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences Xiamen 361021 China
⁵ College of Safety and Environmental Engineering, Shandong University of Science and Technology Qingdao 266590 China
⁶ College of Water Sciences, Beijing Normal University Beijing 100875 China

^* Corresponding authors (emails: wlsun@pku.edu.cn (Weiling Sun); jinrenni@pku.edu.cn (Jinren Ni))

Received: 14 May 2022
Revised: 9 August 2022
Accepted: 9 August 2022

Abstract

Antibiotics have received extensive attention due to their sophisticated effects on human health and ecosystems. However, there is an extreme scarcity of information on composition, content, geographic distribution, and risk of riverine antibiotics at a large spatial scale. Based on a systematic review of over 600 pieces of literature (1999–2021), we established a global dataset containing more than 90,000 records covering 169 antibiotics and their metabolites in surface water and sediment across 76 countries. The occurrence of prioritized antibiotics largely depended on socioeconomic developmental levels, and the current “hotspots” of polluted rivers were found mostly in less developed countries or emerging economies (e.g., some in Africa, South America, and Asia). By developing the screening protocol for risk-based prioritization of antibiotics, we advanced a rank list of antibiotics for guiding formulation of region-specific strategies, which highlighted the importance of whole life cycle management of antibiotics in health maintenance of the world’s rivers.