Many manufactured organic chemicals in medical, agricultural, industrial, and commercial products have been recognized as emerging environmental contaminants.  In soil-water systems, emerging contaminants (ECs) of concern include a unique group of neutral hydrophobic compounds, the fluorotelomer alcohols (FTOHs), and a group of ionogenic compounds, human and veterinary antibiotics.  These ECs display physicochemical properties distinctive from previously studied organic contaminants.  The polyfluorocarbon chain of FTOHs imparts both hydrophobic and oleophobic characteristics that differ from analogous hydrogenated or halogenated organic compounds.  Antibiotics tend to be moderately polar to polar with multiple ionizable functional groups that contribute to moderately high aqueous solubility and low octanol water partition coefficients (K_ow), while simultaneously promoting sorption to charged surfaces.  A handful of recent studies suggest that binding to dissolved organic carbon (DOC) may enhance the transport of both these compound classes (Holten Lützhøft et al. 2000; Liu and Lee 2005; MacKay and Canterbury 2005).  In particular, animal manure, municipal biosolids (i.e., composted sludge), and landfill leachate contain residues of these ECs and are rich in DOC, which may act as a carrier when the wastes are released in the environment. 

       The interactions among a contaminant, DOC, soil, and water are complex, and vary with the properties of the contaminant (e.g., polarity, charge), the DOC (e.g., polarity, size, composition), the soil (e.g., pH, soil organic matter content (SOM), cation exchange capacity (CEC)), and the aqueous solution (e.g., pH, ionic strength).  For FTOHs and antibiotics, some information is available on how they interact with soils, but little is known on how these compounds may interact with DOC and to what extent DOC may enhance their mobility.  The primary objective of my dissertation is to evaluate the magnitude to which environmentally-relevant DOC may bind and potentially enhance the transport of these two distinct classes of emerging contaminants.