Solid phase extraction (SPE) and UV spectrophotometry is used for the determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in soils. A combination of aminopropyl and octadecyl bonded silica in a double SPE cartridge system has been optimized and validated using a certified reference material. The quantification is carried out after a principal component regression. The calibration has been done on a set of 40 samples of contaminated soils and has been optimized by using cross-validation. The 3σ detection limit was found to be 4.5 mg kg−1