Retention of the antibiotic cefuroxime onto agricultural and forest soils

Abstract

Antibiotics in wastewater, sewage sludge, manures, and slurries constitute a risk for the environment when spread on soils. This work studies the adsorption and desorption of the antibiotic cefuroxime (CFX) in 23 agricultural and forest soils, using batch-type experiments. Our results show that the adsorption values were between 40.75 and 99.57% in the agricultural soils, while the range was lower (from 74.57 to 93.46%) in forest soils. Among the Freundlich, Langmuir, and Linear models, the Freundlich equation shows the best fit for the adsorption results. In addition, agricultural soils with higher pH are the ones that present the highest adsorption. Further confirmation of the influence of pH on adsorption is given by the fact that Freundlich’s KF parameter and the Linear model Kd parameter shows a positive correlation with pH and with the exchangeable Ca and Mg values, which are known to affect the charges of the soil colloids and the formation of cationic bridges between adsorbents and adsorbate. In addition, Freundlich’s n parameter shows a positive and significant correlation with the organic matter content, related to the high adsorption taking place on forest soils despite their pH < 5. Regarding desorption, in most cases, it is lower than 1%, which indicates that CFX is adsorbed in a rather irreversible way onto these soils. Overall, these results can be considered relevant regarding their potential impact on environmental quality and public health.