<p>Sulfonamide antibiotics (SAs), extensively utilized in the breeding industry, pharmaceutical industries, and human healthcare, enter the environment through wastewater discharge and surface runoff. Currently, SAs are widely detected across various environmental compartments, including water bodies (up to 17,400&#xa0;ng/L), soils, and sediments (up to 2089&#xa0;ng/g). The environmental persistence and potential ecological risks of SAs have attracted considerable attention. This review systematically summarizes the environmental occurrence, migration, and transformation behaviors of 12 representative SAs. Results show that the environmental transport of SAs is influenced by complex matrices and modulated by extreme environmental events, while their transformation is co-regulated by coupled physicochemical and biological processes. SAs can induce oxidative stress (e.g., EC₅₀ for green algae reaching 5.53&#xa0;mg/L), reproductive inhibition, and metabolic disorders in organisms, and may accumulate through the food chain (e.g., bioconcentration factor in shrimp as high as 5126 L/kg), thus posing threats to ecosystems and human health. Furthermore, environmental residues of SAs also promote the spread and horizontal transfer of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs, e.g., <i>sul1</i> and <i>sul2</i> detected in 100% of samples from some agricultural soils), leading to functional degradation of microbial communities and inducing a "pollution-resistance" vicious cycle. This review aims to provide an overview of the occurrence, migration, transformation, and toxic effects of SAs, and offer theoretical insights for regional collaborative governance and global ecological risk mitigation strategies.</p> Graphical Abstract <p></p>