The effect of ultralow-dose antibiotics exposure on soil nitrate and N2O flux
Open accessAbstract
Exposure to sub-inhibitory concentrations of antibiotics has been shown to alter the metabolic activity of micro-organisms, but the impact on soil denitrification and N2O production has rarely been reported. In this study, incubation and column transport experiments were conducted on soils exposed to as many as four antibiotics in the ng · kg(-1) range (several orders of magnitude below typical exposure rates) to evaluate the impact of ultralow dose exposure on net nitrate losses and soil N2O flux over time. Under anaerobic incubation conditions, three antibiotics produced statistically significant dose response curves in which denitrification was stimulated at some doses and inhibited at others. Sulfamethoxazole in particular had a stimulatory effect at ultralow doses, an effect also evidenced by a near 17% increase in nitrate removal during column transport. Narasin also showed evidence of stimulating denitrification in anaerobic soils within 3 days of exposure, which is concurrent to a statistically significant increase in N2O flux measured over moist soils exposed to similar doses. The observation that even ultralow levels of residual antibiotics may significantly alter the biogeochemical cycle of nitrogen in soil raises a number of concerns pertaining to agriculture, management of nitrogen pollution, and climate change, and warrants additional investigations.
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Low levels of common antibiotics contaminate groundwater and soil and can disrupt bacterial denitrification.
“Recent ecological findings show that even low levels of common antibiotics contaminate groundwater and soil and can disrupt bacterial denitrification[424–426]”
From Enterosalivary nitrate metabolism and the microbiome: Intersection of microbial metabolism, nitric oxide and diet in cardiac and pulmonary vascular health (2017) · cites this paper as [424]
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- Authors
- DeVries, S. L., Loving, M., Li, X., & Zhang, P.
- Affiliations
- The Graduate Center, CUNY (US)
- City College of New York (US)
- Peking University (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Zhang, Pengfei
- Venue
- Scientific Reports
- Published
- 2015-11-26
- Volume
- 5
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 16818-16818
- ISSN
- 2045-2322 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4660347
- OpenAlex
- W2176938303
- Cited by
- 68
- References
- 36
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 5
- FWCI
- 2.91
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Scientific Reports (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- CUNY Academic Works (City University of New York) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- U.S. Department of Agriculture
- Northeast SARE
- National Institute of Food and Agriculture
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Pollution › Pharmaceutical and Antibiotic Environmental Impacts
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Soil Science › Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Pollution › Wastewater Treatment and Nitrogen Removal
- Keywords
- soil denitrification, nitrous oxide flux, nitrate removal, sulfamethoxazole, narasin, nitrogen biogeochemistry, soil nitrogen cycling, climate change, nitrogen pollution
- MeSH terms
- Anaerobiosis, Analysis of Variance, Anti-Bacterial Agents, Nitrates, Nitrous Oxide, Oxidation-Reduction, Soil, Time Factors, Geologic Sediments, Denitrification
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