To respond to new environmental regulations, forest products industries are reducing or eliminating the release into the environment of chemicals used to protect wood products. For this, mills need tools that support practical and reliable programs for monitoring concentrations of wood protectants in processes and the environment. Conventionally, wood preservatives are detected mainly by gas-liquid, high performance liquid and thin layer chromatography, and by mass spectrometry. Before target chemicals can be identified and quantified by such analyses, they have to be extracted and purified. The preparative steps limit the number of samples analyzed, and are difficult to implement in mills. Further, the instrumentation is expensive, and its operators require a high level of technical expertise. Immunoassays may offer alternative approaches for monitoring wood protectants in processes and the environment. They can deliver high specificities, low detection limits and high sample throughputs; are applicable to a wide range of chemicals; and can complement the traditional analyses. They are increasingly accepted for screening samples at contaminated sites. In this paper, we will describe the concept for and development of an immunoassay for a commercial wood protectant, commenting on key issues, and will review the status of the field kit immunoassays available to solid wood products industries.

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