Inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) have emerged in the last decades as key materials for a number of technologies. In particular, noble metal (Ag, Au) and iron oxide NPs have revealed important applications due to their plasmonic and magnetic properties, respectively. Among these applications, this review provides, on one hand, an overview on the use of colloidal metal NPs in surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) chemical analysis and, on the other hand, the application of iron oxides as a new class of nanosorbents for water pollutants. These distinct types of NPs are the main building blocks to produce [a] Raman spectroscopy is a powerful analytical tool for chemical characterization, providing information about molecular structure, surface processes, and interface reactions. [31,32] Raman spectroscopy is based on the inelastic scattering of photons by chemical species and materials (Raman scattering). Among the incident photons that hit the sample only a small portion is inelastically scattered, i.e. comes out at a different frequency from the incident light. The spectral information is based on the detection of these scattered photons that are recorded as energy shifts (Raman shifts) from the wavenumber of the elastic scattered photons (Rayleigh scattering). Each band in the Raman spectrum can be assigned to a vibrational mode (or Paula