Determination And Analysis Of Quinolones In Aquaculture Environments In Pearl River Delta

A fast and cost effective method was developed to determine the residues of 3 quinolones infish tissues, sediments and waters by liquid-liquid extraction and high performance liquidchromatographic (HPLC). The conditions of extraction and chromatography parameters wereoptimized and discussed. The limit of determination for ciprofloxacin, norfloxacin andenrofloxacin was 2 ng/ml, 2 ng/ml and 1 ng/ml, respectively. Linear range was 5～500 ng/ml. Theaverage recoveries of 3 quinolones in spiked fish muscles ranged from 73% to 113%, and therelative standard deviations were between 2.43% and 17.08%.We determined the concentration of quinolones in fish, water and sediment samplescollected from the freshwater fish farms and marine fish farms in the Pearl River Delta. Theresidue of quinolones were ranged from 0 to 1005.48 ng/g in fish samples, from 0 to 13.27ng/g in sediments and from 0 to 6.63 ng/g in water samples, respectively. The results indicatedthat the residues of quinolones in the aquaqtic environment were mainly existed in the biota suchas fishes and sediments and very low in almost all waterborne samples, even lower than the limitof determination.Residues of quinolones in the fish muscle and liver of four kinds of fishes collected frommarkets are detected too. Those fishes were large mouth bass, grass carp, rice field eel and eelwhich were from the market of Liwan, Panyu, Huadu, Huangpu, Tianhe belonging to Guangzhoucity. Residues concentration of 3 quinolones were found in different level (from 0 to 35.13 ng/gin large mouth bass; from 0 to 192.8 ng/g in grass carp; from 0 to 26.01 ng/g in rice field eel;from 0 to 56.39 ng/g in eel).35 species of wild fishes collected from the estuary of Pearl River and Beijiang River weremeasured by HPLC. The concentration of NFLX in fish is the highest, the second for CPLX andthe lowest for ENFX. Concentrations of three kinds of quinolones were less than 50ng/g in allfish samples, in which sixty percent ENFX had not been found.The safety of fishes for food in the Pearl River delta was estimated according to the MRL ofdrugs in China. The data indicated that all of the samples accorded with the Criterion of FoodSafety of the Peoples of Republic of China. However, some of the samples could not meet thehigher export criterion.