Environmental fate ecotoxicological risks and nano enabled remediation of antibiotics in aquatic environments

Abstract Antibiotics are continuously released into aquatic environments from municipal, hospital, pharmaceutical, livestock, and aquaculture sources. Their risk depends not only on parent-compound concentrations but also on class-specific persistence, sorption, mobility, transformation products, bioaccumulation, and selection for antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This review critically links these processes to remediation performance and distinguishes removal of antibiotic residues from reduction of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Conventional physical, chemical, biological, and advanced oxidation technologies are compared with nature-based and nano-enabled approaches using removal performance, energy demand, secondary waste, material recovery, and scalability. Particular attention is given to aquatic phytoremediation and to the still-limited direct evidence for nano-enabled phytoremediation of antibiotics; studies using plant-derived biochars or nanomaterials without living plants are treated as supporting, rather than direct, evidence. Nanotoxicity, transformation-product risks, and long-term environmental fate are also evaluated. Finally, recent artificial intelligence and machine-learning (AI/ML) applications for predicting removal, selecting plant-material combinations, optimizing operating conditions, and enabling real-time monitoring are assessed. Priority needs include field validation, standardized reporting, paired chemical-AMR endpoints, safe-by-design nanomaterials, and interpretable predictive models.