An atomic-absorption spectrophotometric method for the determination of traces of manganese in solution with thenoyltrifluoroacetone (TTA) is described. Manganese(II) is extracted with 0.01M TTA in methyl isobutyl ketone (MIBK) at pH 9.5. The atomic-absorption of the organic phase at 279.5 nm is measured. Except for chromium, iron, hafnium, niobium, nickel, rhodium, tin, titanium and zirconium, microquantities of many other cations and anions do not interfere. Iron can be removed by MIBK extraction before the TTA extraction. The sensitivity of the method was 1.6 ng/ml for 1% absorption in aqueous solution. The method was successfully applied to the analysis of environmental waters. Manganese in the filtered fractions of water samples was reliably determined with relative standard deviations of 7% at the 5 mug/l. level and 1% at 50 mug/l.