Oxolinic acid in aquaculture waters: Can natural attenuation through photodegradation decrease its concentration?

Abstract Quinolones, such as oxolinic acid (OXA), are antimicrobials commonly used in aquaculture. Thus, its presence in the aquatic environment surrounding aquaculture facilities is quite easy to understand. When present in aquatic environment, pharmaceuticals may be subjected to several attenuation processes that can influence their persistence. Photodegradation, particularly for antibiotics, can have significant importance since these compounds may be resistant to microbial degradation. OXA photodegradation studies reported in literature are very scarce, especially using aquaculture waters, but are markedly important for an appropriate risk assessment. Results hereby presented showed a decrease on photodegradation rate constant from 0.70 ± 0.02 h−1 in ultrapure water to 0.42 ± 0.01 h−1 in freshwater. The decrease on photodegradation rate constant was even more pronounced when brackish water was used (0.172 ± 0.003 h−1). In order to understand which factors contributed to the observed behaviour, environmental factors, such as natural organic matter and salinity, were studied. Results demonstrated that dissolved organic matter (DOM) may explain the decrease of OXA photodegradation observed in freshwater. However, a very sharp decrease of OXA photodegradation was observed in solutions containing NaCl and in synthetic sea salts, which explained the higher decrease observed in brackish water. Moreover, under solar radiation, the use of an 1O2 scavenger allowed us to verify a pronounced retardation of OXA decay, suggesting that 1O2 plays an important role in OXA photodegradation process.