Cadmium as a heavy metal is one of the most important environmental pollutants. Due to the long half-life and high toxicity of cadmium for human and animals this element is of special importance. Cadmium pollution of water resources due to its direct role in production of agricultural crops and foods is very dangerous. Industrial development has led to increased heavy metal pollution in environment endangering human health. On the other hand due to the shortage of water resources and the necessity of sewages use, investigation on finding and synthesis of high efficient sorbents is crucial. In addition to high efficiency, the sorbents should be affordable with low cost. Natural clays due to environmental sustainability, abundance, low cast and high surface area are currently the most widely used sorbents for heavy metals removal processes. In recent years nano materials with larger sorptive surface area and faster sorption kinetics are used for elimination of water pollutions. Better understanding of the adsorption and desorption of heavy metals, and the effects of ionic strength and the pH of solution is needed for effective purification of waters contaminated with heavy metals. In this study the natural-zeolite, nano-zeolite and polyacrylamid modified-zeolite are examined for sorption of cadmium from aqueous solutions. The natural clay was obtained from Firoozkooh mine and the other sorbents were prepared from the natural sample. The sorbents were analyzed for some chemical and physical properties such as elemental composition, cation exchange capacity, point of zero charge and the XRD diffraction. The X-ray diffraction patterns showed a shift from crystalline to amorphous phase in nano-zeolit but in the case of the modified clay there was no change in the mineral structure. The kinetics of sorption examined at 10 mg/l of cadmium concentration and 0.5 to 24 hrs of reaction time. Using different kinetics models, the best fits were observed by the pseudo first order and pseudo second order models for the modified-zeolite and Elovich and power function for zeolite and nano-zolite. Sorption isotherms were derived at the concentration ranges of 1 to 10 mg/l as low and 5 to 100 mg/l as high concentration in a 24h batch equilibrium experiment. Desorption of Cd(II) was also studied with the clay samples initially treated with the metal concentrations of 4.5, 10, 45 and 100 mg/l during the sorption study. Sorption isotherms of Cd were well described by the Freundlich and Coble-Korrigan models. Desorption isotherms of Cd from zeolite in low concentration showed little deviation from sorption data indicating a reversible sorption. But for other sorbents noticeable hysteresis was observed in all sorbate concentrations. The effect of ionic strengths of 0.01 and 0.1 molar on sorption were also examined at Cd concentrations of 4.5 and 45 mg/l. The increase in ionic strength decreased the sorption specially, at higher Cd concentration. This effect was different among the sorbents and nano-zeolite showed the list decrease in sorption under elevated ionic strength. The effect of initial pH of 5 to 7 on sorption was also examined. The Cd sorption decreased with decrease in pH for all sorbents. This effect was the list in modified zeolite. Key words: Cadmium sorption, Cadmium desorption, Natural-zeolite, Nano- zeolite, Modified zeolite, Polyacrylamide.