Chapter 4: Industrial Effluents And Their Impact On Freshwater Fish Health

Abstract

The growth of industries has had huge positive effects on the economy; however, the creation of a significant amount of industrial waste, which has also led to a large amount of pollutants being dumped into natural lakes and rivers, is one negative consequence of that growth. Industrial effluent, or wastewater, consists of a combination of different chemical compounds produced during various manufacturing processes like textiles, leather tanning, electroplating, pharmaceuticals, paper production, petrochemicals, and metal processing. Many of these effluents are discharged into freshwaters without any treatment or before they have been sufficiently treated (Authman, Zaki, Khallaf and Abbas, 2015) and contain toxic metals, organic compounds, dyes, solvents, acids, alkalis and suspended solids that affect the quality of the aquatic environment in which they are discharged.