A Study on Efficiency of Effluent Treatment Plants and Threat to Public Health in Context of Bangladesh

Bangladesh is a developing country. Many industries are establishing day by day. Among them a huge number of industries do not have ETP plant and many of them has not efficient ETP plant which impact our environment and our public health directly. The liquid wastes of these industries are discharged into nearby natural stream, surface drain, low land or ditch. The effluents are usually characterized by low or high pH, high BOD and COD, high turbidity, high color, high suspended solids etc. As a result, discharge of untreated or poorly treated wastewater causes death of aquatic life and the resulting environmental pollution effects on plants, animals and human. So this current study work was carried out in few different industries of Bangladesh. These industries produce various types of products from different plants. Like every industry, wastes from different plants are discharged in surface drain and then flow combined and become treated by ETP before final discharging to the environment. This study has been carried out to find out whether some specific parameters of ETP outlet water treated by ETP can comply with the Standards for Waste from Industrial Units or Projects Waste (DOE, 1997) or not. These specific parameters are pH, TSS, TDS, BOD, COD, and DO. In this comparative study, it was found that pH, total solid, total dissolved solids, suspended solids and the selected of metal constituents of all Individual ETP treated waster are not within the limits of Industrial Effluent Quality Standards of Bangladesh. However BOD5 , COD and DO values of different industries are not within the allowable limit. BOD5 , COD were found higher and DO was found lower than the standard concentration set by DOE