BACKGROUND The adsorption of single pollutants onto graphene oxide (GO), such as heavy metals or organics, has been widely investigated, however, the simultaneous removal of the antibiotic-heavy metal multi-pollutants from the intensive livestock and poultry industry has been investigated little. In this study, the GO/reduced GO(rGO) were prepared as adsorbent and the adsorption performance of tetracycline (TC), Cu2+, and the multi-pollutants TC-Cu were investigated. RESULTS The GO surface was abundant in oxygen-containing functional groups but was affected by a reduction effect, and thus rGO lost a large amount of -OH. In the presence of Cu2+, GO's adsorption quantity of TC increased by 96.64%, which was considerably higher than the increase (23.31%) observed in the case of rGO. In contrast, the adsorptivity of GO/rGO in Cu2+ increased slightly with the addition of TC. Further, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis revealed that the Cu2+ participated in a bridging interaction between TC and the adsorbent, forming a complexation TC-Cu. CONCLUSION GO and rGO showed favorable adsorption of TC, Cu2+, and TC-Cu. The adsorption capacity of multi-pollutants was increased compared with individual adsorption, indicating a cooperative adsorption between the TC and Cu2+. The adsorption mechanism mainly included pi-pi conjugation, electrostatic interactions, and the bridge connection by Cu2+, which contributed to the performance of GO/rGO with respect to the adsorption of the antibiotic-heavy metal multi-pollutants. (c) 2018 Society of Chemical Industry