Sorption, Fate, and Mobility of Sulfonamides in Soils.

Sulfonamides (SAs) are one of the broadly used antibiotics in domestic animal operations and have a notable potential of entering the environment through animal manure management practices. In this study, sulfamethazine (SMZ) was used as a prototype to study the sorption, fate, and transport of SAs in soil-water systems using batch and miscible-displacement experiments. Sulfamethazine was degraded to a polar metabolite (PM). The batch experiments indicated that the linear sorption partitioning coefficient ( K) values for the PM ranged from 7.5 to 206.2 L kg. Strong relationships between the sorption of PM and various soil fractions and organic matter were also observed. The miscible-displacement experiments showed that 33-70% of SMZ was degraded within 6 h during transport in the soil columns. Also, 69-99.7% of SMZ and PM were recovered in the effluents suggesting their high mobility. Also, the simultaneous degradation, sorption, and transport of SMZ and PM were described using a two-site chemical nonequilibrium fate and transport model, using the K values obtained from the batch experiments. The parameters of this model were uniquely estimated using a global optimization strategy, the stochastic ranking evolutionary strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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