Hello everyone!
Giving context in the Philippines, aquaculture (whether freshwater or saltwater) water quality test kits (with brands such as API) are recently being used as an affordable alternative for environmental monitoring, particularly in sewage/wastewater effluent sampling and/or performance monitoring of wastewater treatment plants. Given the possible limitations and challenges of these tools most especially on the quantification of water quality parameters, can these tools still be considered to be used on a wider scale of water quality analysis for environmental monitoring? Do we have any initiatives to be considered first before using these tools in further understanding the physio-chemical characteristics of either freshwater/saltwater ecosystems, in pursuit of an open-source, nature-based, science-based and pro-people approach of environmental conservation?
Do NOT use standard, off the shelf strips, for food/drug applications. There are special tracibility and accuracy requirements. Normally, a couple of sweat words would follow here. But hopefully, the idea got through. Calibration can be a major issue in food/drug applications!
If you are referring to an earlier note, the test strips used for fish tanks were used on suspected contaminated water samples as a way to reduce cost. If there was an environmental concern, getting the EPA approved testing can be very expensive. If a problem showed up On the test strips, then the expensive test would be done. That would lower the cost of samples needing the EPA testing.
In industrial situations, this is not the typical approach taken. Typically, the problem areas will be tested, per EPA methods(yes, the expensive ones). And when the issue stops showing up ( say heavy metals), the testing will become less frequent. The time between tests may become even longer, but it is rarely eliminated.
Hope this helps.
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