Institute of Sustainable and Environmental Chemistry, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Scharnhorststraße 1/C13, 21335 Lüneburg, Germany.
Chemosphere. 2015 May;127:42-8. doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2014.12.091. Epub 2015 Feb 2.
Veterinary antibiotics (VAs) are widely recognized as important environmental contaminants. Despite the extensive use of antibiotic agents in meat and poultry production and the known resistance problems in human and veterinary medicine, detailed knowledge about usage patterns of VAs in Germany is still scarce. This lack of knowledge severely impacts current research on the environmental risk of VAs, but it is expected that recently established surveillance programs for antimicrobial drug usage will close this knowledge gap. Therefore, a spatially more precise environmental risk assessment and management might become possible in the near future. In this study, a new usage pattern-based exposure screening (UPES) approach for the comprehensive environmental exposure assessment of veterinary antibiotics was preliminarily assessed using approximated scenarios of antimicrobial substance usage in German meat and poultry production. Resulting predicted manure concentrations covered seven orders of magnitude ranging from ng kg(-1) to g kg(-1) dry weight (dw). Beyond that 14 antibiotic substances of 10 different antimicrobial classes were predicted to have the potential to occur in soil concentrations higher than 100 μg kg(-1) dw. These findings raise further questions regarding the environmental exposure and risks of frequently used VAs, especially in regions with higher-than-average livestock density. With this case study we demonstrate that UPES simplifies to account for differing local agricultural factors and therefore facilitates priority-setting on a regional level. In this context a simple prioritization scheme for environmental assessment of VAs, considering both the expected environmental concentration and the frequency of application, is proposed in this paper.
兽用抗生素（VAs）被广泛认为是重要的环境污染物。尽管抗生素在肉禽生产中的应用广泛，且已知在人和兽医医学中存在耐药问题，但德国兽用抗生素的使用模式仍知之甚少。这种知识的缺乏严重影响了当前对抗生素在环境中风险的研究，但预计最近建立的抗菌药物使用监测计划将填补这一知识空白。因此，在不久的将来，可能会进行更精确的空间环境风险评估和管理。在这项研究中，使用德国肉禽生产中抗生素物质使用的近似情景，初步评估了一种基于使用模式的暴露筛选（UPES）方法，用于对兽用抗生素进行全面的环境暴露评估。由此预测的粪便浓度涵盖了纳克/千克至克/千克干重（dw）的七个数量级。此外，预计 14 种来自 10 种不同抗菌类别的抗生素物质有可能在土壤浓度高于 100μg/kg dw 的情况下出现。这些发现引发了关于经常使用的 VAs 的环境暴露和风险的进一步问题，特别是在牲畜密度高于平均水平的地区。通过这个案例研究，我们证明 UPES 简化了考虑不同当地农业因素的过程，因此有利于在区域层面上确定优先事项。在这方面，本文提出了一种简单的 VA 环境评估优先级方案，同时考虑预期的环境浓度和应用频率。
