In the present work, we have investigated the sorption efficiency of treated olive stones (TOS) towards cadmium and safranine removal from their respective aqueous solutions. TOS material was prepared by treatment of olive stones with concentrated sulfuric acid at room temperature followed up by a subsequent neutralization with 0.1 M NaOH aqueous solution. The resulting material has been thoroughly characterized by SEM, energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX), MAS C-13 NMR, FTIR and physicochemical parameters were calculated. The sorption study of TOS at the solid-liquid interface was investigated using kinetics, sorption isotherms, pH effect and thermodynamic parameters. The preliminary results indicate that TOS exhibit a better efficiency in terms of sorption capacities toward the two pollutants (128.2 and 526.3 mg/g for cadmium and safranine, respectively) than those reported so far in the literature. Moreover. the sorption process is ascertained to occur fast enough so that the equilibrium is reached in less than 15 min of contact time. The results found in the course of this study suggest that ion exchange mechanism is the most appropriate mechanism involved in cadmium and safranine removal. Finally, the sorption efficiency of TOS is compared to those of other low-cost sorbents materials yet described in the literature. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.