Abstract The polymer adsorbent Tenax® has been widely employed for studying desorption of organic contaminants in soils and sediments and for correlating physical availability with bioavailability. Although Tenax has been invoked to act as an infinite sink that completely and instantaneously removes solutes from the aqueous phase, to our knowledge no systematic characterization of Tenax resins has been carried out. The present study provides equilibrium and kinetic parameters for the uptake of benzene, nitrobenzene, naphthalene, phenanthrene, and pyrene by Tenax in selected water-solute-Tenax systems, and it offers guidelines for the use of Tenax resins. Sorption isotherms of the test compounds on Tenax-TA are nonlinear, and most show an inflection at high concentration, marking a change in physical state from glassy to rubbery. A simple dual-mode model was applied to the isotherms below the apparent inflection point. Sorption parameters for dissolution and hole-filling domains each correlate with the octanol-water partition coefficient. The effects of dissolved organic matter and salinity on Tenax-TA uptake are minor. Regeneration of Tenax-TA by hot-methanol extraction increased its affinity for naphthalene. Inclusion of 23% graphitized carbon in the polymer reduced affinity for phenanthrene. Uptake rate data were fit by the dual-mode diffusion model, which assumes diffusion in the polymer matrix. The obtained diffusion rate parameter correlates with molecular size. Equilibrium and kinetic parameters for benzene and nitrobenzene were comparable despite a three-orders-of-magnitude difference in their Henry's law coefficients, indicating that a pathway to the Tenax surface through the vapor phase is not required. Extrapolating to typical conditions in soil-desorption studies reveals that single-solute uptake is 95% or more complete within 4 min for the test compounds and within 7 min for benzo[a]pyrene. Thus, Tenax is suitable for compounds with desorption from soil or sediment that occurs over comparably longer timescales.