## 1 Introduction  
For the past decades, water pollution has got greater attentions due to the growing contaminants from traditional pollutants to emerging contaminants [1]. As one of the mostly emerging pollutants, the pharmaceuticals have attracted considerable attention due to the higher usage for both human health and livestock breeding [2]. Cimetidine (as showed in Table 1), a kind of typical pharmaceuticals, is widely used as H\({}_{2}\)-receptor antagonist in mammals for the treatment of duodenal ulcers and gastric hypersecretion [3; 4]. Like other pharmaceuticals, tons of cimetidine are consumed annually and continuously accessed into the environments through various pathways [5]. Numerous researchers have found the occurrence of cimetidine in many kinds of aqueous environments [6; 7; 8]. Although the relative concentration of cimetidine in the environment is low, reports showed that cimetidine had short or long-term adverse effects on many aquatic animals, especially altering the capacity of immunity and reproduction [9]. It is urgent to exploit new promising technology for the elimination of cimetidine from the water environment. In recent years, with the increasing demand of clean water, the requirement is increasing for the development of advanced water treatment technologies, such as advanced oxidation, photocatalytic degradation membrane filtration, and adsorption [10; 11]. The oxidation of cimetidine with many materials (such as TiO\({}_{2}\) or UV/visible light) has been extensively investigated due to the high removal efficiency. Results showed that cimetidine could be removed by reactive oxygen species, which are produced in the advanced oxidation and photocatalytic degradation process [12]. However, the secondary pollutants may be introduced in the degradation process and the adverse effects may be enhanced [11]. Compared with other methods, adsorption remains gained more interest in the elimination of micropollutants from aqueous solutions due to the simplicity, low initial cost, eco-friendliness, and easy possibility of regeneration [13]. As the key factor of adsorption, desired adsorbents should have high surface area, amount adsorption sites, low cost, and easy regeneration. With the rapid development of urbanization in China, a large number of construction waste produced in recent years [14]. As a typical construction waste, waste bricks could cause an adverse effect on the environment due to the low utilization rate [15]. Recently, waste bricks could be investigated as an adsorbent due to its low cost, stable chemical structure, micropopce volume, which showed better performance than conventional adsorbents such as clay, silt, and lime soil [16]. Studies have showed that waste bricks could be used for the removal of dyes, phosphorus, and heavy metals from the water environment [17; 18; 19]. However, compared with the commercial adsorbents, the lower adsorption capacity of waste bricks inhibits their application in wastewater treatment [20]. Many physical or chemical methods could be used to improve the removal efficiency of waste bricks [21; 22]. A report showed that the incorporation of TiO\({}_{2}\) onto waste brick could enhance the removal efficiency of Pb\({}^{2+}\)[22]. Furthermore, few reports focus on the removal of micropollutants by waste brick. As we know, iron species showed good efficiency for the elimination of emerging micropollutants from aqueous solutions due to the inner-sphere complexes [13]. Nevertheless, most of these iron species show relatively low surface area, small particle size, and easy agglomeration, which inhibit their application in water treatment [23]. Therefore, we propose that functionalized waste bricks with different iron species may overcome the deficiencies remarked above. Due to the proper characteristics of waste brick, the iron species could be incorporated onto waste brick homogeneous heighten the adsorption efficiency of waste bricks.