## 1 Introduction  
Emerging contaminants (ECs) may be defined as compounds that are not currently covered by existing water regulations but are thought to be a threat to environmental ecosystems and human health [1]. Amongst them, pharmaceuticals constitute a group of large concern, since they were designed to trigger a physiological response. Therefore, the presence of pharmaceuticals in the aquatic environment, even at relative low concentrations, may affect non-target individuals and species. ECs may enter the environment by different routes, depending on their usage pattern and on their application mode. In the specific case of pharmaceuticals that come from human consumption and/or excretion, municipal waste water treatment plants (WWTPs) are main sources in the aquatic environment [1]. These plants are mostly inefficient in the removal of these pollutants since the primary and secondary treatments usually applied were not designed for this purpose, but for the removal of regulated parameters [2]. However, since legislation on the discharge of pharmaceuticals is expected to come out in the near future [3], it is necessary to find efficient treatments. Removal of pharmaceuticals at WWTPs before discharge would be possible by the inclusion of an appropriate tertiary treatment [4]. Among the different options, adsorptive treatments are convenient due to their low energy consumption and simple operation [5]. Furthermore, the incorporation of adsorptive treatments into current WWTPs is quite feasible [6]. Recently, [PERSON] et al. [7] reviewed the literature on the adsorption and adsorbents used for the removal of pharmaceuticals from water. Although activated carbon is the most frequently used adsorbent for this purpose [8], polymeric materials have been also employed in such applications [9; 10; 11; 12; 13; 14]. Polymeric adsorbents have several advantages over conventional activated carbons: their simpler processing; considerably easier regeneration; the possibility to shape them into the most suitable form (e.g., sheets, beads, membranes); the potential of controlling the pore structure and internal surface area by varying the polymerization conditions [15]; and the possible modification of their physical and chemical properties [16]. In any case, and whatever the adsorbent, a main advantage of adsorption processes for the removal of pharmaceuticals from water is that they do not entail the generation of transformation products [17; 18; 19], whose concentration and/or toxicity may be larger than for the parent compound. Anti-inflammatory drugs are frequently detected in natural waters due to their widespread consumption [20]. In fact, acetaminophen and ibuprofen are among the most widely used drugs for fever and headaches, since they may be acquired without prescription. Due to their over-the-counter availability, they are mostly ubiquitous in municipal waste water, with high detection frequencies and relatively high concentrations compared with other drugs [21]. Indeed, in a recent work by [PERSON] et al. [22], the shadow price for the WWTPs discharge of several ECs was evaluated in three ecosystems, namely wetlands, river, and sea. The aim was to weigh the environmental damage caused by ECs, which is essential information to frame the subsequent decision-making process on the management measures that should be implemented. These authors [22] found that, for the three ecosystems, acetaminophen, followed by ibuprofen, had the largest shadow prices among the studied ECs, which points to the removal of these pharmaceuticals from WWTPs effluents as a priority. Several authors have reported the utilization of different types of adsorbents to remove acetaminophen [23; 24; 25] and ibuprofen [26; 27; 28] from water. However, just [PERSON] et al. [29] studied the utilization of three polymeric resins (Amberlite XAD2, XAD7, and XAD761) for the adsorption of acetaminophen from ultrapure water.