The adsorption of the widely used herbicide atrazine onto three model inorganic soil components (silica gel, gamma-alumina, and calcite (CaCO(3)) was investigated in a series of batch experiments in which the aqueous phase equilibrated with the solid, under different solution conditions. Atrazine did not show discernible adsorption on gamma-alumina (theta=25 degrees C, 3.8<pH<12.1) or calcite (theta=25 degrees C, 7.7<pH<11.7). Significant and completely reversible adsorption from solutions was found for silica gel suspensions. The adsorption isotherms obtained for atrazine uptake on silica gel particles were best fitted with the Freundlich model. An increase of the ionic strength of the electrolytic solution induced an increase of the surface concentration of atrazine on silica gel, indicating significant electrostatic interactions between atrazine and silica gel particles, possibly through interaction with the surface silanol groups of the solid substrate. Increase of the pH value of the electrolyte solution from 6 to 9 considerably decreased the amount of atrazine adsorbed on the silica gel substrate. Decrease of the solution pH from 6 to 3 had only a slight effect on the surface concentration of the adsorbed atrazine. The adsorption of atrazine on silica gel increased when the temperature was decreased from 40 to 25 degrees C, an indication that the adsorption is exothermic. The calculated enthalpy of adsorption ( approximately 10 kJ/mol) indicates that the uptake at the solid-liquid equilibrium pH (6.1) was largely due to physisorption.