Occurrence of Selected Veterinary Pharmaceuticals in Water from a Fish Pond Settlement in Ogun State, Nigeria

Abstract

Pharmaceuticals are emerging contaminants that are increasingly entering the water system. These include veterinary drugs which are used for treating, mitigating or preventing illness or influencing specific body functions in animals. This research is aimed at using HPLC to detect the presence of veterinary drugs that were extracted in fish-pond-wastewater and river water from an aqua cultural environment in Ijebu-Ode (Ogun State-Nigeria) using Solid Phase Extraction Cartridges (C 8 and C 18). The three pharmaceuticals tested were Oxytetracycline, Tetracycline and Chloramphenicol. All the pharmaceuticals, except Tetracycline, were found in varying concentrations with the highest value for Chloramphenicol found to be 0.60ng/ml and that of Oxytetracycline was 0.46ng/ml. The discovery of Chloramphenicol and Oxytetracycline in water using SPE-HPLC is novel in Nigeria. This result showed the prevalence of pharmaceuticals in water in this small community which occasionally depends on river water for domestic purposes. Establishing modern wastewater treatment devices which can conveniently remove pharmaceuticals in water before they are discharge into the environment is recommended as this will help to preserve our ecosystem.