Treating antibiotic residues

Antibiotic residues in Vietnam, a country with a dense and rich network of rivers, canals and ponds, aquaculture in ponds and rivers is relatively difficult. The excessive use of antibiotics and antibiotic residues that have not been thoroughly treated lead to the risk of polluting water sources, significantly affecting aquatic life, considerably reducing the ability to export aquatic products to major markets as well as directly affecting human health if contaminated products are consumed.
To make environmental treatment easier, the important issues that aquaculture farmers need to pay attention to when using antibiotics are:

  • -Limit repeated use of the same 1 antibiotic to avoid increasing drug resistance
  • -Monitor veterinary aspects of antibiotic use in aquaculture ( if possible)
  • -Understand the principles and correctly apply the methods of using antibiotics
  • -Antibiotics must be discontinued for a certain period before harvest to avoid antibiotic residues in farmed aquatic products.
  • - Use antibiotics only to treat farmed aquatic products/livestock that are ill from bacteria, and do not use antibiotics to treat viral diseases such as white spot virus or yellow head disease...

(Recommendations of the National Agricultural Extension Center )

Methods for treating antibiotic residues in water:

Using adsorbent materials is the main method to remove residual antibiotics from water.
- In the world: conventional materials ( activated carbon, biomass materials), advanced materials ( Zeolites, BiVO4, Ru, Zr metal alloys). However, the adsorption capacity of these advanced materials is still limited due to low adsorption capacity., small surface area. - In Vietnam:In 2015, the state issued Circular 31/2015/TT-BNNPTNT regulating the monitoring of residues of toxic substances in animals and farmed aquatic animal products. It clearly states that only products whose results meet the requirements may be allowed onto the consumer market, and antibiotics fall under these regulations.
Methods such as oxidation treatment, membrane treatment, filtration and centrifugation, biodegradation by microorganisms and the use of activated carbon for water treatment are quite environmentally friendly. This is a heterogeneous material, therefore they settle quickly after a few minutes, which helps and makes it easy to separate them from the water environment. The antibiotics, are then easily desorbed from the material using small amounts of common solvents such as ethanol, dilute acid…., helping to treat antibiotic substances more thoroughly, and can be reused many times to reduce costs for water treatment systems.

According to the journal Kết quả Nghiên cứu Khoa học & Phát triển Công nghệ, the mesoporous carbon material developed by the author Trần Văn Thuận and colleagues is effective in treating some antibiotics in water by ≥ 90% and its BET specific surface area reaches over 100 m2/g. In addition, there is a green method from plants, namely the green synthesis method of Ag-ZnO nanocomposite from lotus stem extract applied to treat the antibiotic ciprofloxacin under visible light irradiation. The advantages of these methods are low cost, high photocatalytic performance, chemical stability and environmental friendliness.