Ammonia (NH3) has an important use in the chemical industry and is widely found in industrial wastewater.For this investigation of copper-based rare earth composite metal materials,aqueous solutions containing 400 mg/L of ammonia were oxidized in a batch-bed reactor with a catalyst prepared by the co-precipitation of copper nitrate,lanthanum nitrate and cerium nitrate.Barely any of the dissolved ammonia was removed by wet oxidation without a catalyst,but about 88％ of the ammonia was reduced during wet oxidation over the catalysts at 423 K with an oxygen partial pressure of 4.0 MPa.The catalytic redox behavior was determined by cyclic voltammetry (CV).Furthermore,the catalysts were characterized using thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) and scanning electron microscope-energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX),which showed that the catalytic behavior was related to the metal oxide properties of the catalyst.In addition,the copper-lanthanum-cerium composite-induced cytotoxicity in the human lung MRC-5 cell line was tested,and the percentage cell survival was determined by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-5-(3-carboxymethoxyphenyl)-2-(4-sulfophenyl)-2H-tetra-zolium (MTS) analysis in vitro.No apparent cytotoxicity was observed when the human lung cells were exposed to the copper-lanthanum-cerium composite.