Over the past two decades, this environmental conference series has emerged to be­ come one of the major international forums on the chemical aspects of environmental pro­ tection. The forum is called Chemistry for the Protection of the Environment (CPE). The sponsors of this CPE series have included the Chemical Societies of Poland, France, Bel­ gium, Italy, Egypt, and the U.S.A., the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the American Society of Testing and Materials, the International Ozone Association, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, the Ministries of the Environment of Poland, France, Belgium, and Italy, U.S. Agency for International Development, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, more than twenty universities and institutes of higher learning, and five national academies of sciences. The first meeting in this series was organized by Prof. Pawlowski and Dr. Lacy in 1976 at the Marie Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, Poland. The conference dealt with various physicochemical methodologies for water and wastewater treatment research projects that were jointly sponsored by U.S. EPA and Poland.