[Article] In situ measurement of solution concentrations and fluxes of sulfonamides and trimethoprim antibiotics in soils

Antibiotics are one of the most important classes of pharmaceuticals, widely used in our daily life, for human and veterinary purposes to cure or prevent some bacteria associated diseases. As some of the dose of antibiotics administered to animals or humans is not metabolized, iti s excreted, enters effluent streams and reaches the environment. Antibiotics are incompletely removed by wastewater treatment plants, and discharged as parent compounds or easily re-transferable metabolites. Their adverse effects, particularly promotion of antibiotic resistance, has raised their profile within environmental science and ecology as a problem contaminant. Techniques, such as Diffusive Gradients in Thin-films (DGT), which either minimally disturb the soil or perturb it in a controlled way are most likely to provide information relevant to toxicity. DGT is a promising tool for understanding the fate and behaviour of polar organic chemicals in soil, and it potentially provides an in situ approach for assessing their bioavailability.