The removal of emerging contaminants during water treatment is a current issue and various technologies are being explored. These include UV- and ozone-based advanced oxidation processes (AOPs). In this study, AOPs were explored for their degradation capabilities of 25 chemical contaminants on the US Environmental Protection Agency's Contaminant Candidate List 3 (CCL3) in drinking water. Twenty-three of these were found to be amenable to hydroxyl radical-based treatment, with second-order rate constants for their reactions with hydroxyl radicals ((OH)-O-center dot) in the range of 3-8 x 10(9) M-1 s(-1). The development of biological activity of the contaminants, focusing on mutagenicity and estrogenicity, was followed in parallel with their degradation using the Ames and YES bioassays to detect potential changes in biological effects during oxidative treatment. The majority of treatment cases resulted in a loss of biological activity upon oxidation of the parent compounds without generation of any form of estrogenicity or mutagenicity. However, an increase in mutagenic activity was detected by oxidative transformation of the following CCL3 parent compounds: nitrobenzene ((OH)-O-center dot, UV photolysis), quinoline ((OH)-O-center dot, ozone), methamidophos ((OH)-O-center dot), N-nitrosopyrolidine ((OH)-O-center dot), N-nitrosodi-n-propylamine ((OH)-O-center dot), aniline (UV photolysis), and N-nitrosodiphenylamine (UV photolysis). Only one case of formation of estrogenic activity was observed, namely, for the oxidation of quinoline by (OH)-O-center dot. Overall, this study provides fundamental and practical information on AOP-based treatment of specific compounds of concern and represents a framework for evaluating the performance of transformation-based treatment processes. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.