The Environmental Impacts of Textile Dyeing Industries in Bangladesh

For the developing countries, textile sector is a great asset for their economic specially in the South Asian countries. Behind the story of gorgeous, fashionable dresses, there are lots of stories are going on. Consumer smiles when he/she wears a new dress. But, there is a great environmental impact even in making a new single garment. The growth of Bangladeshi RMG sector is associated with different environmental issues due to the dyeing industries. Different dyes, chemicals and fixing agents are used in dyeing of textiles. Synthetic dyes comprised with sulphur, naphthol, vat dyes, nitrates, acetic acid, soaps, enzymes chromium compounds and heavy metals like copper, arsenic, lead, cadmium, mercury, nickel, cobaltetc and certain auxiliary chemicals all collectively make the textile effluent highly toxic. The ecosystem of Bangladesh is greatly affected by this. The rivers, soil and air are being polluted. The COD, BOD, SS, alkanity, Chlorine, DO, TDS, EC are not in the range of EQS standard for surface of the rivers. In this study, water samples from the top five polluted rivers were collected, then different quality parameters were tested and later the effect of environment has been discussed. The outcome of the result shown that, the surface water quality of those five rivers are being greatly polluted by the textile indusdry's effluents. Some