Antibiotics in the municipal solid waste incineration plant leachate treatment process

At present, the distribution of antibiotics in wastewater is mainly concentrated in municipal sewage treatment plants, and little attention is paid to the distribution and removal of antibiotics in landfill leachate. The concentrations of five sulfonamide, three tetracycline, and two macrolide antibiotics in leachate from a solid waste incineration plant were measured and the efficiency of the leachate treatment process in removing them was investigated. All target antibiotics were detected in the raw leachate samples. The total sulfonamide, tetracycline, and macrolide concentrations in the raw leachate ranged from 0.98 to 90.25, 1.90 to 50.64, and 146.41 to 382.90 ng/L, respectively. The leachate treatment process simultaneously removed all ten antibiotics with high removal efficiencies ranged from 96.0% to 100%. Biological and physical processes affected the removal of different types of antibiotics differently, with macrolides being more difficult for microorganisms to degrade than the other two categories. Leachate contaminants correlated to antibiotics suggesting environmental factors impact the removal of antibiotics. The accumulation of antibiotics in the leachate treatment process may create environmental problems.