Alternatives to face anticoccidial ionophore antibiotics as emerging environmental pollutants

Abstract

This short review/opinion text includes a selection of recently published papers dealing with environmental pollution caused by anticoccidial antibiotics (with an especial focus on ionophores) and on remediation alternatives to retain/remove these contaminants from affected areas. More in-depth details and comments are provided for those works that the authors of the review considered of higher relevance in this field. As scientific search tools, the authors used Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus. These tools provided results for selected lags of time to focus on those being more recent, as well as for not limited time periods, thus allowing both time-specific and more extended views. The overall results indicated that the assessment of environmental pollution due to anticoccidial antibiotics is an underdeveloped and emerging field of research, with many aspects still needing to be further explored and subjected to more detailed scrutiny in the coming future.