Antibiotics pollution in Gonghu Bay in the period of water diversion from Yangtze River to Taihu Lake

As a famous project in China, the water diversion from Yangtze River to Taihu Lake Project has impacts on the water quality of Taihu Lake, especially Gonghu Bay, which is the entrance of the diversion water and the drinking water source for Wuxi and Suzhou. To investigate contamination of the antibiotics in Gonghu Bay in the period of water diversion, 16 antibiotics in 14 water samples collected from Wangyu River and Gonghu Bay in China were analyzed by liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry. The results indicated that the concentration of total antibiotics in Wangyu River and Gonghu Bay ranged from 1320 to 17,209 ng/L (mean: 3920 ± 3841 ng/L). The average level of different antibiotics was tetracyclines (range 1082–15,310 ng/L, mean 3161 ± 3479 ng/L) > quinolones (range 225–1325 ng/L, mean 463 ± 276 ng/L) > sulfonamides (range n.d.–888 ng/L, mean 402 ± 248 ng/L) > macrolides (range 12–17 ng/L, mean 14 ± 2 ng/L), and levels of the detected antibiotics in Gonghu Bay were higher than that in Wangyu River, indicating that the antibiotics pollution in Gonghu Bay were much severer than Wangyu River. Ecological risk evaluation showed that in the Wangyu and Gonghu water, trimethoprim (TMP), sulfacetamide (SAAM), sulfamethoxypyridazine (SMP), and sulfamerazine (SMRZ) presented low ecological risk levels, chlortetracycline (CTC), tetracycline (TC), roxithromycin (ROM), and sulfamethoxazole (SMX) had medium level of risk, and oxytetracycline (OTC), norfloxacin (NOR), ofloxacin (OFL), ciprofloxacin (CIP), and enrofloxacin (ENR) had high level of ecological risk. The total hazard quotient of antibiotic mixtures for each sample site indicated high risk of antibiotics in Wangyu River and Gonghu Bay. In summary, the water diversion could mitigate antibiotic pollution in Gonghu Bay to a certain degree. However, the risk of antibiotics in the Wangyu River and Gonghu Bay is still high.