Influence of Environmental Pollutants on Water Quality and Biochemical Parameters of Fish Tissue

Environmental pollution by toxicants has become one of the most important problems in the world. Water pollution problem is due to uncontrolled solid and liquid domestic, in addition to agrochemical contamination and lack of sustainable wastewater management that are becoming threats to living organisms and consequently to Human being. The continual loading of toxicants into our environment creates water pollution problems due to their direct toxic effect on aquatic biota. In addition, pollutants such as heavy metal can be incorporated into food chains and concentrated in aquatic organisms to a level that affects their physiological state. The impact of the environmental pollution on water quality and fish in aquatic ecosystem showed that there were clear differences between the concentrations of pollutants in water and fish tissues where, tissues showed different capacities for accumulating these pollutants. Environmental pollutants have harmful effects on the biochemistry of different tissues of fish. There were changes in the activities of antioxidant defense enzymes (superoxide dismutase and catalase), liver enzymes (ALT, AST and ALP), triglycerides, cholesterol, total proteins and total lipids in muscles of fishes which in turn affect meat Quality, the growth rate and fish production.

Keywords: Environmental pollution; Aquatic ecosystem; Superoxide dismutase; Catalase