The removal of phosphate from water has attracted increasing attention because of the dominant role of phosphate in eutrophication. In this study, a novel nanoscale hybridized adsorbent, NLC@213, was fabricated by immobilizing nanosized lanthanum carbonate (NLC) into the pores of the macro-porous polyacrylic anion exchanger D213 through an in-situ precipitation method for phosphate adsorption from wastewater. NLC@213 exhibited excellent pH tolerance and possessed a high selectivity for phosphate in the presence of competing anions (Cl-, NO3-, SO42-, SiO32-, and HCO32-) and organic acids (humic, tannic, and gallic acids). The maximum phosphate adsorption capacity reached 53.64 mg P/g at 30 degrees C. Moreover, fixed-bed column adsorption experiments demonstrated that NLC@213 could effectively treat 2400 bed volumes of real secondary effluent (phosphate concentration decreased from 2.0 to <0.5 mg P/L). The exhausted NLC@213 could be regenerated easily using a binary solution of NaCl (1.5 mol/L)Na2CO3 (3 mol/L), and no significant capacity loss was observed during the recycling for column adsorptiondesorption. The underlying mechanism of phosphate adsorption was investigated by a combination of Fourier-transform infrared, transmission electron microscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and the formation of LaPO4 center dot xH(2)O was suggested to be the main pathway in the separation process of phosphate from real secondary effluent.