The discovery of antibiotics was a milestone in the history of medicine. Millions of people have been saved from these infectious diseases with the advent of antibiotics. However, the overuse of antibiotics would cause a potential risk in the future such as antibiotics resistance gene. In Hong Kong, Kai Tak River was reported as top ten rivers with the highest levels of antibiotics contamination. This study was aimed to examine the concentration of two antibiotics of interest, Clarithromycin and Ciprofloxacin in the river water and also taken into consideration the measurement of the two antibiotics resistance bacteria that might reside in the treated waste water. It was found out that Sha Tin Wastewater Treatment Plant was the major source of antibiotics in Kai Tai River. Nevertheless,...[ Read more ]

The discovery of antibiotics was a milestone in the history of medicine. Millions of people have been saved from these infectious diseases with the advent of antibiotics. However, the overuse of antibiotics would cause a potential risk in the future such as antibiotics resistance gene. In Hong Kong, Kai Tak River was reported as top ten rivers with the highest levels of antibiotics contamination. This study was aimed to examine the concentration of two antibiotics of interest, Clarithromycin and Ciprofloxacin in the river water and also taken into consideration the measurement of the two antibiotics resistance bacteria that might reside in the treated waste water. It was found out that Sha Tin Wastewater Treatment Plant was the major source of antibiotics in Kai Tai River. Nevertheless, the emergence of the ARB at the middle part was discovered to be from an influent from Tai Ching Street Market instead of the wastewater water treatment plant. Multi-functional hydrogel and TiO₂ Oxidation are the two methods that were studied for antibiotic resistance bacteria disinfection and antibiotic degradation. With the hydrogel technology, all kinds of bacteria were found to have a reduction of approximately 60%. For the degradation of the antibiotics using the titanium dioxide, the performance with the standard laboratory solution was found to be satisfactory with 90% degradation over 3 hours of reaction time. Nevertheless, in the practical application using an environmental water sample from the river, the performance was much lower, marked at 30% and 50% for Clarithromycin and Ciprofloxacin respectively.