Consumption of water from the ground and surface sources contaminated with organic contaminants continue to be a cause of deteriorating health of people living in undeveloped areas. Organic contaminants include some emerging contaminants i.e. pharmaceuticals such as acetaminophen and personal care products. Though these contaminants are present in insignificant amounts in water, their synergistic behaviour can cause some long-term health effects to humans and animals. The specific objectives of the research work were to synthesize and characterize TiO2 nanoparticles, and to determine the photocatalytic rate of the TiO2 nanoparticles on acetaminophen. The synthesis of TiO2 nanoparticles using titanium isopropoxide was done using a modified version of the sol–gel method where peptization and binding were done using PEG 1000 followed by immobilization onto borosilicate glass spheres. Characterization techniques used for the physical and chemical properties of TiO2 nanoparticles were EDS, XRF, SEM and XRD. Chemical characterization results confirmed the synthesis of TiO2 by the presence of the high a percentage of the metal oxide using XRF, and the observed high Ti and O elemental percentages using EDS. Physical characterization results showed the formation of densely packed TiO2 nanoparticles blanketing the surface of the borosilicate glass spheres using SEM, and their shape was determined to be a tetragonal crystallographic structure. Photocatalysis of acetaminophen followed the first order kinetics a kinetics rate of 0.023 min−1 and an efficiency of 45.4%. Synthesis and characterization were successful. In this work immobilized TiO2 nanoparticles were found to be suitable for photocatalytic removal of acetaminophen from wastewater.