**10. Antibiotics in soil**

Probably one of the main concerns about antibiotic contamination is their accumulation in soil, by the effect on resistant bacteria and direct consequence in human and animal health. Likely the easier indirect antibiotic detection is to calculate the concentration in crops [73, 74], as was mentioned by Christou et al. [25] reporting antibiotics in tomatoes from the soil. This work elaborated during three years shows that the accumulation of DCF, SMX, and TMP in the soil detected by MeOH-NaOH solution and Chromatography MS/MS, The results show an imminent physical translocation as we shown in **Figure 1**, and show great variability in the accumulation of the three antibiotics during those 3 years, with increases or decreases depending on the irrigation using wastewater and depending on the duration of irrigation and the origin of the wastewater applied. Other authors monitoring sulfonamides and tetracyclines over 18 years from an agricultural field site in Lower Saxony, Germany [75]. SAs and TCs are largely fixed in the upper soil layer. The analysis showed a strong decrease below the sampling depth of 30 cm which is the depth of the plow and below other antibiotics such as SG and SMZ were detected up to 90 cm, TC was shown to persist >100 μg/kg in topsoil, however this antibiotic no leachate in deeper soil segments or groundwater. They conclude that some SAs disappeared, but other veterinary antibiotics are even more persistent than expected.

In Kenia, Africa Yang et al. [76] analyzed four soils in the suburban area of Narok. Over 12 antibiotics analyzed they found that SMX, SMZ, OTC, and ENR were the major antibiotics that polluted those soils among 12 antibiotics monitored and the highest average value was for Narok 43,64 μg/kg dry weight, and the other three average values were Mai Mahiu 26.70 μg/kg dry weight, Juja 24.41 μg/kg dry weight, and Mount Suswa Conservancy 12,21 μg/kg dry weight. They advise more attention to reduce the misuse of SAs. Pan and Chu [27], investigated TC, NOR, SM2, CAP, Erythromycin (EM), antibiotics in agricultural soils, and was probably the first study. The Persistence and environmental risk profile of the five antibiotics were TC > NOR>EM > CAP>SM2, but "the study suggests that the adsorption of antibiotics in soil depends on the physicochemical properties of both antibiotics and soil". Probably this study was the first to develop a model for predict antibiotic persistence in soil.

#### **11. Antibiotics in crops plants**

Antibiotics for plants were used since the 1950s to control certain bacterial diseases the most common used are oxytetracycline and streptomycin. In the United State antibiotics for plants represent 0,5% of total antibiotics used in this country. However, the emergence of antibiotic resistance of *Xanthomonas campestris*, *Erwinia amylovora*, and *Pseudomonas* spp., and has blocked the control of their diseases [77]. Then plants could pick up three kinds of antibiotics: antibiotics plants, human antibiotics [44], and veterinary antibiotics [78].

**175**

*Pharmaceutical Antibiotics at a Significant Level in Nature: From Hospitals, Livestock…*

Some, but not many countries have rules for quality plant irrigation, but that concern is complex because WWPTs have some low load of antibiotics. The other side of the problem is irrigating plants directly with WW [25, 28]. As mentioned above, different antibiotics were detected in crops plant [58, 79, 80], those research emphasize the low risk for human health as daily intake, forgetting the drug charge in the environment and the resistant bacteria even now for control pathogen of

Finally, we arrive at the climax where all the antibiotics will finally be deposited if their degradation does not occur or if the increase of antibiotics continues its course as if such substances do not represent a risk for all the species in nature that has learned to fight diseases with evolution as antibiotic resistance [81]. Rivers and the sea are the final deposits of antibiotics and or following studies and many others that we cannot all cite shown that biodegradation, degradation, and bioaccumula-

The previous data show that antibiotics degradation is not totally in agreement with antibiotics in soils, farms, and WWTPs. We know today the antibiotic loads in pristine rivers as Amazona, Niger, Congo, Zambezi, Lena, Amour, and Yenisei carrying low concentrations of antibiotics, but the remaining rivers of the worldwide receive greater loads of antibiotics [41, 73, 82]. We could again make the list of antibiotics and see that they follow the same comparison of antibiotics and all effluents from WWTPs [81], the main technical solution will be the degradation of antibiotics before reach the river stream. About this concern, some researchers

As Zang et al., [85], mentioned," the ocean is an important sink of land-based pollutants", and exactly as crop plants allow detection of antibiotics, marine food will be the best way to follows the study of bioaccumulation of antibiotics [86, 87]. Liu et al. [86], found 9 SAs, TMP, 5 FQ, and 4 ML, which were in gill, muscle, kidney, and liver tissues of seven wild fish species collected from Laizhou Bay, North China. As previous famous works with mercury accumulation of marine fish, now there are antibiotics reports in tissue fish in higher concentrations than

Alga will be another antibiotic "*bio-accumulator*" to detect antibiotics in rivers and sea. Seoane et al. [88] developed an experimental evaluation of chloramphenicol (CHL), florfenicol (FLO), and oxytetracycline (OTC) in marine microalga *Tetraselmis suecica*, showing that three antibiotics inhibited the growth after 96 h with IC50. Finally, we think that in the future it will be necessary to look for antibiotics in river and sea sediments. But these first works are already beginning to fill the research data worldwide and to conclude without doubts that antibiotics are the "new emergent pollutants of Earth". Pioneer work from Fernandes et al., [89] in Portugal found azithromycin in Leça river at 2819 ng/g in water but in sediments at

**13. Strategies to change all previous practices, challenges, and hopes**

**Table 2** is not a summary of this review of all articles. It is a simple exercise to verify that perhaps no antibiotic has disappeared from industrial production and it generates a contradictory taste associated with the fact that pharmaceutical companies are discouraged from manufacturing new antibiotics, but the sale and

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95368*

**12. Antibiotics in rivers and sea**

tion can once again put the health of the planet at risk.

begin to develop this challenge [48, 83, 84].

aquaculture fish.

43,2 ng/g.

the plant.

*Pharmaceutical Antibiotics at a Significant Level in Nature: From Hospitals, Livestock… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95368*

Some, but not many countries have rules for quality plant irrigation, but that concern is complex because WWPTs have some low load of antibiotics. The other side of the problem is irrigating plants directly with WW [25, 28]. As mentioned above, different antibiotics were detected in crops plant [58, 79, 80], those research emphasize the low risk for human health as daily intake, forgetting the drug charge in the environment and the resistant bacteria even now for control pathogen of the plant.
