A natural material, cotton fiber, has been applied as a solid-phase extraction (SPE) adsorbent for sample preparation for the analysis of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) in water samples using high-performance liquid chromatography. The cotton fiber was used directly without any chemical modifications, which avoided a complex synthesis process and consumption of a large volume of organic solvent. The conditions affecting the extraction efficiency were optimized to achieve high detection sensitivity, and included elution solvent, ultrasonic elution time, extraction time, sample volume, salt concentration and organic modifier addition. Under the optimal conditions, the detection limits for seven PAH compounds could reach up to 0.1–2.0 ng L⁻¹. The method accuracy was evaluated using recovery measurements in standard spiked samples and good recoveries of 70.69–110.04% with relative standard deviations of less than 10% have been achieved. Consequently, the method developed was successfully applied for determining PAH in environmental samples: snow water, metal-fabrication factory wastewater and Xiangjiang River water, with PAH contents ranging from 13.2 to 83.1 ng L⁻¹. Therefore, using cotton fiber as a new SPE adsorbent, was easy to prepare, had a low cost and great reusability, and this implies it is a promising method for sample preparation.