on the use of fluorescence measurements to characterize wastewater this paper examines the correlations between some water quality parameters and fluorescence intensities and spectra in filtered wastewater using a 280 nm excitation wavelength we did not obtain satisfying linear relationships between fluorescence and cod or toc r2 approximately 04 for any of the emission wavelengths used between 320 and 400 nm especially at 355 nm the average emission lambdamax the relationships with nk were better r2 approximately 07 leading us to suggest that one evaluates mainly the organic nitrogen content at lambdaex 280 nm whole spectra processing did not improve the correlations gel permeation chromatography yielded markedly different toc and fluorescence chromatograms which explains the difficulty of correlating organic content and fluorescence other investigations are necessary before spectrofluorimetry can be used as a reliable technique for online wastewater pollution estimation