Physicochemical characterization of effluents from industries in Sabata town of Ethiopia

Untreated industrial effluents have often caused environmental pollution and human health concern. This study analyzed the pollution of wastewater from some selected industries in the Sabata town of Ethiopia. The composite sampling techniques were used to collect wastewater from industries in dry (April–May) and wet (June–July) seasons and analyzed physicochemical properties using atomic absorption spectrophotometry. All parameters investigated were analyzed using mean and Analysis of Variance. The results depicted that the conductivity, biological oxygen demand, chemical oxygen demand, and pH were all beyond the safe limits of World Health Organization along the studied Sabata River and industries. This indicates pollution of the water that not apt for drinking, farming, and industrial uses. Furthermore, the electrical conductivity, biological oxygen demand, chemical oxygen demand, total suspended solid, total nitrogen, and total phosphorus were statistically significant (p < 0.05), which indicates the disruption of river water quality by industrial effluents. Therefore, the government should take this into account and devise mitigation strategies through enforcing existing standard of industrial pollution control regulation, installation of treatment plant, transforming of industrial residual into biogas products, awareness creation for the society, initiation of sustainable corporate industrial responsibility, and the implementation of environmental protection regulation.