Soil oxidation with reactivated sodium persulfate (SPS) is a new kind of in situ soil remediation technology. In order to assess scientifically the environmental risks of the chemicals to oxidized soil, two types of soils obviously different in organic matter(OM) content were oxidized with ferrous ion activated SPS and then used to explore the effects of oxidation on sorption behaviors of three volatile organic contaminants (VOCs) in the two soils. Results show that the oxidation had great effects on soil organic matter (e.g., humic acids and humins). It removed 71.9% of the organic matter in Soil No. 1, which was relatively high in soil organic matter and 49.9% in Soil No. 2, which was relatively low in soil organic matter. The sorption of the three compounds in Soil No. 1 was dominated by the mechanism of partition. Soil oxidation did not alter the dominance, but slightly increased its sorption capacity. The sorption of the three compounds in Soil No. 2 was somewhat nonlinear, implying the existence of some other sorption mechanisms. However, the sorption isotherms became more linear after oxidation. The normalized logarithm of partition coefficient of organic carbon content (lg K_foc ) was used to evaluate OM sorption capacity of the soils as affected by oxidation. Lg K_foc of the three compounds in the two oxidated soil samples were substantially higher than those in the original soil samples. The analysis indicates that activated SPS oxidized quite a portion of polar components (such as carboxyl and hydroxyl etc.) of OM so that the polarity of the OM was reduced, thus in turn enhancing its sorption of non-polar compounds.