Degradation of Doxycycline, Enrofloxacin, and Sulfamethoxypyridazine under Simulated Sunlight at Different pH Values and Chemical Environments

Abstract

In this work, the dissipation of the antibiotics doxycycline (DC) (from the group of tetracyclines), enrofloxacin (ENR) (a fluoroquinolone), and sulfamethoxypyridazine (SMP) (a sulfonamide) is investigated both under simulated sunlight and in the dark, at three different pH (4.0, 5.5, and 7.2), and in the presence of different salts and humic acids. The results indicate that all three antibiotics are very sensitive to photodegradation, and this sensitivity increased with rising pH values, from 4.0 to 7.2. The rise in pH also caused an increase in the degradation kinetic constants and a decrease in the half-lives of antibiotics. In general, the half-lives ranged from a few minutes to 6 h, depending on the pH conditions and the specific antibiotic, and followed the sequence DC > SMP > ENR, although at pH 5.5 the sequence changed to SMP > DC > ENR. After 24 h of simulated sunlight, mineralization was always lower than 10%, although the antibiotic was not quantifiable after the same time of exposure to light (24 h), which indicates that intermediate compounds were generated. The effect of the presence of salts on the dissipation of the three antibiotics was negligible for NaCl and NaNO3, while NaHCO3 did favor the dissipation of DC and ENR. The presence of humic acids showed no effect on the dissipation of SMP, and it only slightly increased the dissipation of DC and ENR. These results may be useful in the assessment of the persistence/degradation of the antibiotics studied when they reach different environmental compartments and may suffer exposure to light under different physicochemical conditions.