Soil organic matter and mineral content as crucial factors for the fate of tetracycline in soils

Abstract Soil self‐cleaning ability and bioavailability of different pollutants are strongly dependent on the soil properties. It is not easy to determine effects of individual soil characteristics because they can impact together often in a synergic effect. Therefore, soil samples used in this study were chosen according to their properties to have the same or very similar one property and different other property to try to assess an effect of changing property. This work is focused on tetracycline as antibiotics applied in veterinary medicine. The adsorption capacity increased with contents of organic matter, Ca, P, and sand. The increase in pH resulted in the decrease in adsorption ability. Increased adsorption ability at pH = 3 is probably connected with the deprotonation of its hydroxyl with a similar p K a value. Desorption experiments with water provided contents of leachable fraction. The highest contents of mobile fractions were determined for a strongly acidic pH value.