  We study the effect of impurities in inducing spin-orbit coupling in
graphene. We show that the sp3 distortion induced by an impurity can lead to a
large increase in the spin-orbit coupling with a value comparable to the one
found in diamond and other zinc-blende semiconductors. The spin-flip scattering
produced by the impurity leads to spin scattering lengths of the order found in
recent experiments. Our results indicate that the spin-orbit coupling can be
controlled via the impurity coverage.
