Fifty-years of personal reflection on advances in environmental chemistry and sustainability

A personal retrospective on the nexus of environmental quality, chem., and sustainability will be presented. As a 1964 freshman chem. engineering and chem. student in Chicago, I became painfully aware of several major environmental problems including air and air pollution, lake eutrophication, and ecosystem disruption. The magnitude of the neg. impacts of air and water quality as evident in the stark visible degrdn. of air, soil, and water and its consequences on aquatic life motivated my 45 years of chem. research directed toward atm. chem., water chem., pollution control technologies, advanced oxidn. and redn. chem., photochem., sonochem., pulsed-plasma chem., electrochem., and chem. kinetics. A brief review of the the key advances made in environmental chem. as related to environmental sustainability will be provided.