The proper handling of wood after service is a today's problem. Untreated wood could be reused or may be used as fuel. For treated wood special care is demanded to avoid environmental impacts. Thus, analytical methods are requested to detect rapidly whether and to what extend wood is contaminated, covering a wide spectrum of organic and inorganic agents used during the last 50 years. Traditional methods can not meet today's requirements due to their time consumption or high detection limits. Modern analytical techniques are widely used in research and industry, but their application for wood waste is still difficult due to the complex and differing organic structure of wood. An overview on analytical methods, their chances and limits will be given. In particular it is reported on a joint research programme initiated by the German Environment Foundation. The program aims at the development of a single or combined method that is able to detect both, organic and inorganic contaminations in wood in industrial scale. This technique shall be suitable for the entrance control at waste disposal sites as well as the controlled demolition. The most promising techniques for fast analises are based on Laser-Plasma-Atomic-Emmission-Spectroscopy for inorganic agents and Ion-Mobility-Spectroscopy for organic agents.

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