Editor’s Note

I am pleased to introduce our next invited paper, “Sorption of Statin Pharmaceuticals to Wastewater-Treatment Biosolids, Terrestrial Soils, and Freshwater Sediment.” This one is particularly satisfying since it has been coauthored by one of our associate editors, James A. Smith. Jim is currently a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Virginia. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in civil engineering from Virginia Tech and his Ph.D. in civil engineering from Princeton University. From 1985 to 1992, he worked as a research hydrologist in the Water Resources Division of the U.S. Geological Survey. He has served as the UPS Foundation Visiting Professor of Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, the William R. Kenan Visiting Professor at Princeton University, and the Cavaliers’ Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Virginia. He is also the recipient of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP) Award for Outstanding Teaching in Environmental Engineering and Science. His research focuses on the fate, transport, and treatment of environmental pollutants and the design and testing of point-of-use water treatment technologies for the developing world.

Jim’s coauthors are Karl J. Ottmar and Lisa M. Colosi. Karl graduated from the University of Virginia in 1998 with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering. While serving in the U.S. Army as an engineering officer he completed an M.S. in arctic engineering from the University of Alaska-Anchorage in 2002 and an M.S. in environmental engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla in 2003. In the spring of 2006 he began working toward his Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering at the University of Virginia researching the fate, transport, and occurrence of two high-cholesterol pharmaceuticals in wastewater treatment systems. He has presented his work at national conferences for the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry and the American Chemical Society. He has been licensed as a professional civil engineer since 2003 and anticipates graduating in the spring of 2010 with a Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering.

Lisa is an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Virginia. She joined the faculty in 2008 after obtaining a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2007. During her time as a graduate student, she worked under the supervision of Professor Walter J. Weber, Jr., and was the recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Student Research Fellowship. Her primary research interests at present include fate, behavior, and transformation of emerging pollutants as well as engineered cultivation of microalgae for use as alternative energy source.

The topic of this paper is timely. As Craig Adams recently noted in his chapter on pharmaceuticals in the book Contaminants of Emerging Environmental Concern (edited by Alok Bhandari et al.), few detailed studies on the fate of pharmaceuticals in the environment and in treatment processes have been conducted, and more are needed. This paper helps to fill the gap. Enjoy reading it.