A Literature Review of Wetland Treatment Systems Used to Treat Runoff Mixtures Containing Antibiotics and Pesticides from Urban and Agricultural Landscapes

Emily R Nottingham,Tiffany L Messer

doi:10.3390/w13243631

Abstract

Wetland treatment systems are used extensively across the world to mitigate surface runoff. While wetland treatment for nitrogen mitigation has been comprehensively reviewed, the implications of common-use pesticides and antibiotics on nitrogen reduction remain relatively unreviewed. Therefore, this review seeks to comprehensively assess the removal of commonly used pesticides and antibiotics and their implications for nitrogen removal in wetland treatment systems receiving non-point source runoff from urban and agricultural landscapes. A total of 181 primary studies were identified spanning 37 countries. Most of the reviewed publications studied pesticides (n = 153) entering wetlands systems, while antibiotics (n = 29) had fewer publications. Even fewer publications reviewed the impact of influent mixtures on nitrogen removal processes in wetlands (n = 16). Removal efficiencies for antibiotics (35–100%), pesticides (−619–100%), and nitrate-nitrogen (−113–100%) varied widely across the studies, with pesticides and antibiotics impacting microbial communities, the presence and type of vegetation, timing, and hydrology in wetland ecosystems. However, implications for the nitrogen cycle were dependent on the specific emerging contaminant present. A significant knowledge gap remains in how wetland treatment systems are used to treat non-point source mixtures that contain nutrients, pesticides, and antibiotics, resulting in an unknown regarding nitrogen removal efficiency as runoff contaminant mixtures evolve.

Highlights

Water quality degradation in rivers and streams across the globe is becoming a major concern, especially as stresses from climate change increase [1]
Chemically derived common-use pesticide (CUPs) applications throughout the world have increased by 71% from 1990 to 2017, with 11% used for non-agricultural application in the United States [12,13]
2021 was close behind with 16 publications, even without a complete representative sample of the year, since the studies were collected up to July of 2021. These results demonstrate that research about CUP and antibiotic treatment from wetland systems is growing as more of these contaminants are introduced into the environment and being detected in downstream best management practices and waterways

Summary

Introduction

Water quality degradation in rivers and streams across the globe is becoming a major concern, especially as stresses from climate change increase [1]. Non-point sources include urban, agricultural, and construction runoff [3], which often contain nutrients, suspended sediment, pesticides, antibiotics, and other pharmaceuticals, fecal coliform, and metals [3,4,5,6]. Nutrient contamination, such as nitrate-N (NO3 -N) from fertilizer applications, is persistent in rivers and is the most common form globally of chemical contamination in groundwater, resulting in NO3 -N being a major cause of drinking water impairment across the United States and the globe [7,8,9,10,11]. Antibiotics used by humans often enter wastewater treatment systems where removal efficiencies ranged from 15.8–78.4% from 2010 to 2019 [15]

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