EC or TDS as a Water Pollution Criteria in Water Education Program
Electrical Conductivity (EC) or Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) has been often used to evaluate the water quality in some water education program for children and youth. This study attempted to find out whether EC (or TDS) can be used as a water pollution criteria in water education program. To clarify it, we used the water analysis data of July 2019 and January 2020 from Water Environment Information System. Data from 332 points in Han-river were used to investigate correlation between the parameters, such as BOD, COD, TN, TP vs EC. Correlation(r) for all data of BOD vs. EC was 0.347 for July 2019 and 0.483 for January 2020. No correlation was observed for BOD Ia and BOD Ib for July 2019 (r=-0.041, -0.030, respectively) and BOD Ia for January 2020 (r=0.041). Better correlation for all data of COD vs. EC was obtained (r=0.543 for July 2019 and r=0.610 for January 2020). However, no correlation was observed for COD Ia for January 2020. High vlaue of EC or TDS does not always mean water pollution, especially for clean water environment. Thus, EC (or TDS) alone can not be used as a water pollution criteria.