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Impact of effluent of Pulp & Paper Industry on the economic flora of river

basin at Jaykaypur, Odisha, India and its ecological implications.

# Tripathy, A. P., and Panigrahi*, A. K.,

*Professor Emeritus, Environmental Science Research Cell, Department of Botany,
# Research Fellow, Department of Biotechnology, Berhampur University, BERHAMPUR-

760007, Odisha. India. (Email id of corresponding author: drakpanigrahi@gmail.com)

ABSTRACT

The untreated effluents from pulp and paper mills that are discharged into water
bodies, damages the water quality and toxic for aquatic flora and fauna. This work was

planned to study the effluent of JK Paper mills and its impact on the plants present on

both the sides of the effluent canal and effluent soaking sites on way to joining the
Nagavalli river water at Jaykaypur, Rayagada, Odisha and the impact of untreated effluent on

the crop field inhabiting organisms. The effluent contained significant amount of toxic heavy

metals like mercury and cadmium and has high BOD, COD, dissolved solids and suspended
solids. Crop plant samples like rice, green gram, black gram and ragi and BGA scum

collected from the nearby crop fields indicated presence of mercury and cadmium in their
body. Significant decrease in pigment content of the above samples were noted when

compared to crop plant leaves and BGA scum collected from a non contaminated area.
Experimental study with BGA indicated similar toxicity and depletion of pigment contents

and also found to accumulate mercury and cadmium significantly.

Key words: Paper Mill, crop plants, BGA, pigments, mercury and cadmium.

INTRODUCTION

Among industries, Paper and Pulp industry plays a significant role to contaminate the
fresh water bodies damages the water quality (Kumar et al., 2015 and Singh et al.,

2019); and physico-chemical assessment of paper mill effluent and its heavy metal

remediation using aquatic macrophytes (Mishra et al., 2013). Some authors also reported
that the effluent is fortified with various toxic chemicals and volatile organic compounds

and heavy metals (Ali & Rahman, 2008 and Chopra et al., 2011). Borah et al (2018)
reported high mobility factor values represent relatively higher biological availability of Cd

& Cr in paper mill effluent exposed soil samples and indicated that the industry could pose

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