ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION All water on Earth contains measurable levels of various anthropogenic chemicals. The number and level of detectable contaminants depends on the factors influencing the water, the analytical methods applied, and the intensity of monitoring programs. In the past decade, a great deal of interest and concern has been generated regarding trace pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) and endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) in water (Halling-Sorensen et al., 1998; Daughton and Ternes, 1999; Snyder et al., 1999, 2001, 2007; Sedlak et al., 2000; Drewes et al., 2002; Kolpin et al., 2002; Ternes et al., 2002; Metcalfe et al., 2003; Westerhoff et al., 2005; Richardson, 2007). While this era has seen a flurry of activity related to these emerging contaminants, the earliest publishedmanuscripts regarding EDCs and PPCPs in North American waters date back to the 1960s and 1970s (Stumm-Zollinger and Fair, 1965; Tabak and Bunch, 1970; Garrison et al., 1975; Hignite and Azarnoff, 1977). Figure 1 illustrates the increasing interest in environmental EDC and/or PPCP research over the past few decades. These compounds have increasingly become a concern for water quality maintenance in drinking water supplies, either because of true toxicological implications or because of public perception.
