Occurrences, Seasonal Variations, and Potential Risks of Pharmaceutical and Personal Care Products in Lianjiang River, South of China

Aquatic ecological problems caused by pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) are increasingly becoming an issue of concern. In this study, the seasonal spatial occurrence environmental risk 20 PPCPs were studied at 19 sampling points in surface waters Lianjiang River basin (southern China); its watershed is about 10,100 km2. Sample preparation was performed using solid-phase extraction, determination a high-performance liquid-phase tandem triple quaternary mass spectrometer. Nine detected with total concentrations 19.5–940.53 6.07–186.04 ng L−1 during wet (August 2021) dry (April 2022) seasons, respectively. Four kinds compounds—sulfamethoxazole (SMX), sulfamonomethoxine (SMM), caffeine (CAF), florfenicol (FFC)—had detection rate more than 50% both seasons. CAF, carbamazepine (CBZ), FFC higher season possibly due to usage increased tourism summer. SMX SMM showed average lower biodegradation slight dilution effect from rainfall. The SMX, SMZ, SMM, strongly correlated NO3−, according redundancy analysis Spearman’s correlation analysis. results quotient revealed that CAF on green algae had low all except R16.