From the application of antibiotics to antibiotic residues in liquid manures and digestates: A screening study in one European center of conventional pig husbandry.

In conventional pig husbandry, antibiotics are frequently applied. Together with excreta, antibiotic residues enter liquid manures finally used as organic soil fertilizers or input materials for biogas plants. Therefore, this first screening study was performed to survey the application patterns of antibiotics from fall 2011 until spring 2013. Manures and digestates were then analyzed for selected antibiotic residues from spring 2012 to 2013. The data analysis of veterinary drug application documents revealed the use of 34 different antibiotics belonging to 11 substance classes at 21 farms under study. Antibiotics, particularly tetracyclines, frequently administered to larger pig groups were detected in manure samples up to higher mg kg(-1) dry weight (DW) concentrations. Antibiotic residues in digestates, furthermore, show that a full removal capacity cannot be guaranteed through the anaerobic digestion process in biogas plants.

Laboratory tests on sorption and transformation of the insecticide flubendiamide in Japanese tea field soil.

Flubendiamide belongs to the modern insecticides applied in Japanese tea cultivation to control smaller tea tortrix and tea leaf roller. Since fate and behavior in soil have been only monitored sparsely and fragmentarily until today, laboratory tests were performed on sorption, leaching, biotransformation and photo-induced biotransformation of flubendiamide in two different soils. In batch equilibrium tests, K(d) and K(OC) values were 15 and 298 L kg(-1) for the Japanese tea field soil as well as 16 and 1610 L kg(-1) for the German arable field soil classifying flubendiamide to be moderately mobile and slightly mobile, respectively. The affinity to the tea field soil was additionally confirmed by soil column tests where flubendiamide was predominantly retarded in the topsoil layers resulting in a percolate contamination of only 0.002 mg L(-1). In the aerobic biotransformation tests, flubendiamide did not substantially disappear within the 122-d incubation period. Due to DT(50)>122 d, flubendiamide was assessed very persistent. Supplementary, photo-induced impacts on biotransformation were studied in a special laboratory irradiation system. Despite a 14-d irradiation period, photo-induced biotransformation in the tea field soil was not identifiable, neither by HPLC/DAD nor by LC/MS/MS. 3-d irradiation tests in photosensibilizing acetone, however, showed that the primary photo-transformation product desiodo-flubendiamide was formed. How far this photochemical reaction may also occur in soil of perennial tea plant stands, however, has to be checked in field studies.