As anthropologist Loren Eisley wrote nearly 70 years ago: “If there is magic on the planet, it is contained in water.”
Surely, every American who turns on their tap to seemingly endless streams of clean, drinkable water must agree. Although these days, with emerging contaminants like PFAS, often called “forever chemicals,” and trace pharmaceuticals joining industrial discharge and agricultural runoff as major sources of water pollution, the need for hard science and new technologies and systems to clean and reuse water may feel more urgent than magical.
“People tend to think of water as something that comes from nature, pristine and separate from humans,” said Dr. Bryan Brooks, distinguished professor of environmental science and public health at Baylor, editor-in-chief of the leading international journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, and the director of the Environmental Health Science Program in Baylor’s Department of Environmental Science.
“In reality, we get our water from systems,” he explained, “systems into which we are continuously putting chemicals and waste.”
A globally recognized expert in water quality, environmental toxicology and chemistry, and public health, Brooks mentors students and directs research that focuses on detecting contaminants, tracking how they move through water systems, assessing ecological and human health effects, and developing new treatment technologies.
“We all begin the same way,” he said. “We want clean water for everybody, everywhere. And we understand life depends on it.” Water is one of three “survival sciences,” he noted, along with air and food.
“There is a ‘rule of three’ in survival sciences,” he adds. “We can only sustain life for about three minutes without air, or for three days without water, or for three weeks or so without food.”
A pioneer in the field of environmental science, Baylor established one of the nation’s first environmental degrees in 1970, developing academic programs dedicated to understanding, conserving, wisely using, and protecting our natural world. Today, in the laboratory and in the field, students become “systems thinkers,” Brooks said.
“They have to understand connections across ecosystems and human society: what exists; what we must prepare for, what we must respond to, what we must mitigate, and what we must build back better,” he said.
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The contaminants in our waterways, for example, rarely come from a single source, Brooks said. Pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and industrial compounds enter through countless small, everyday actions — prescriptions filled, hands washed, surfaces cleaned. By the time they are detected, they are already diffuse, often moving through potentially leaky infrastructure designed for an earlier time.
Researchers examine how chemicals move through entire watersheds, accumulate in fish, interact with other compounds, and potentially persist through treatment processes. Students follow contaminants from household use to wastewater systems to rivers and reservoirs, building a complete picture of exposure and risk to find the points where new “cleaning” technologies and molecules can intervene. The conversation has shifted from merely cleaning water to managing entire systems.
For Brooks, the complexity of the problems offers unique opportunities to reduce, track, and treat contamination at multiple points, even as global trends are intensifying pressure on water systems. The United Nations estimates that more than half the world’s population now lives in urban areas, a figure expected to rise to roughly 68 percent within the next 25 years.
Urbanization brings what scientists call “urban stream syndrome.” As natural landscapes are replaced with roads, rooftops, and parking lots, rainwater is transformed into a fast-moving carrier of heavy metals, oils, road salts, and debris. More people also means more wastewater, and with it, higher concentrations of pharmaceuticals, PFAS, and other contaminants. Aging infrastructure compounds the problem, contributing to leaks, sewer overflows, and system failures that can ripple across regions — issues Baylor researchers incorporate into their modeling and field studies.
As a result, Brooks and his students design research projects around the concept of “one water.”
“We have to embrace the reality of ‘one water,’” he said. “It’s not a separate ocean, river, or reservoir. It’s all water. We no longer think in terms of ‘this water here is clean’ and ‘that water over there is dirty.’”
Wastewater isn’t just something to dispose of, he said. Stormwater isn’t just runoff. These are waters, he notes, that can be treated and reused.
“There is no clear boundary between beneficial use of clean and contaminated water anymore,” he said, adding, “there are only stages in a cycle.”
In terms of treating water, Baylor students study the chemistry of compounds to find molecules that transform harmful substances into harmless ones. Much of modern research today is focused on “molecular recognition,” or designing specific molecules to find and latch onto contaminants like arsenic or PFAS, which can be pulled out of the water, leaving beneficial minerals behind. There is also the study of how aquifers, watersheds, and rivers play a different role in water processing; how treated wastewater can reenter natural systems; how wetlands can remove contaminants; how the vegetation along riverbanks can filter runoff, and how water can be reused safely at multiple points along its path.
“We are continually learning from nature,” Brooks noted. “We are inspired by nature and how we can use nature-based solutions, like constructed wetland systems.”
Outside of Dallas, about an hour and a half from Waco, the John Bunker Sands Wetland Center filters and recycles roughly 90 million gallons of water each day through a 2,000-acre constructed wetland. Baylor students and researchers have conducted fieldwork there, collecting data on how natural systems can improve water resources at scale.
Closer to campus, the Lake Waco Wetlands serve as both a functioning water treatment system and a living laboratory. The site filters approximately 11 million gallons of water daily, removing phosphorus and nitrogen before the water flows into Lake Waco, the city’s primary drinking water source. There, Baylor’s Center for Reservoir and Aquatic Systems Research maintains an experimental stream research facility and a shared laboratory with the city, where students perform studies, analyze samples, and track changes in water quality over time.
This hands-on work feeds directly into the classroom, where, because of the complex nature of environmental and ecological sciences and the ways they converge with public health and biomedical issues, students receive an interdisciplinary training. Students and postdoctoral fellows working in Brooks’ group are not just engaged in research that incorporates laboratory and field studies in aquatic, environmental, and comparative toxicology, as well as environmental chemistry, but they also learn sustainable molecular design, environmental risk assessment, and public health.
“Being able to mentor undergraduates as well as graduate students is what drew me to Baylor 24 years ago,” Brooks said. “There is an emphasis at Baylor on student mentoring. I have the freedom to invest time in all students, including undergraduates. It means a lot to me because, as an undergraduate at Ole Miss, a teacher invested time in me, which made my career possible.”
Brooks said he is especially proud of his students who have graduated and gone on to a wide range of careers that touch environmental science, whether it’s helping make cosmetics that don’t contain PFAS to figuring out ways to prevent accidents in industrial settings. And he cites case after case of his doctoral fellows who present the latest research at conferences here and abroad.
Brooks, himself, has an undeniable passion for research. He routinely works internationally on water quality, environmental contaminants, and sustainability issues. He coordinates the strategic Global Horizon Scanning Project, which identifies priority research questions necessary to achieve sustainable environmental quality around the world. His research team regularly partners with scientists outside of the United States to do research, recently working with colleagues in Mexico, the Czech Republic, New Zealand, South Korea, and England.
There are many challenges to keeping water clean, but Brooks is hopeful.
“Everyone who works in this field wants the same thing: clean water for everyone,” he said. “We will work across disciplines. We will work across governments and industries and seek out philanthropic opportunities. We are working with the United Nations’ Office for Disaster Risk Reduction because environmental disasters like hurricanes produce cascading effects. We have recently created, with the UN, a chemical and waste management scorecard to mitigate problems and support local communities around the world.”
One recent hopeful sign, he points out: On April 2, 2026, the EPA, for the first time, added microplastics and pharmaceuticals to its watchlist for substances that are known to exist in water but aren’t yet legally restricted. The watchlist, called the Draft Sixth Contaminant Candidate List, doesn’t ban the contaminants but triggers the mandatory research and data collection needed to set enforceable limits in the future.
Advances in technology are also here, Brooks said. From NASA’s closed-loop water recycling systems in space to large-scale desalination efforts around the world, “New approaches are demonstrating how water can be purified and reused even in extreme conditions,” he said.
“I was struck seeing the Earthset photos from Artemis II,” he added. “It puts things in perspective when you see the ‘blue marble.’ Everyone deserves clean water — it doesn’t matter what community or territory or country you’re in. We are called to support the survival of all people in all places. We aim to sustain all lives and livelihoods.
“At the end of my life,” he added, “I hope to be able to look my children in the eyes and tell them I tried.”
