Oxidative stress has become one of the most intensively studied topics in biomedical research and is an often observed mechanism of non-genotoxic carcinogens like carbon tetrachloride. To monitor the oxidative stress status in in vitro hepatocytes, we compared thermoluminescence (TL) measurements with biochemical standard methods for oxidative stress markers. In contrast to biochemical analysis, TL measurements can be performed without any time-consuming extraction procedures by using directly collected cell material. After incubation with CCl(4) (24 h), thermo-induced light emission increased with rising concentration of CCl(4) up to eightfold at 10 mM CCl(4). Simultaneously, we determined the content of different secondary oxidative stress products, like thiobarbituric acid reactive substances and malondialdehyde. The rise of all biochemical markers complied with the increasing concentration of CCl(4). Finally, we could show that the CCl(4)-induced increase of oxidative stress markers determined by time-consuming biochemical methods perfectly correlates with the increase of high temperature bands in rapid TL measurements.