Abstract Environmental Chemistry describes the world around us — a dynamic world of chemicals which become distributed between earth, water, atmosphere, and biota and transformed by natural reagents. The subject is far from new; until the age of synthetics, chemistry itself was based predominantly on the natural environment. Its present renaissance has been stimulated largely by the promise of assessment and control of toxic hazards and pollution, but the predictability, novel chemistry, and wide applications already apparent may prove at least as important. Just as synthetic chemistry revolutionized the lives of recent generations, environmental chemistry can provide a better future for all Earth's inhabitants.