Experiments were carried out to detect the toxic effects of phenol on some fishes(silver carp, grass carp and common carp etc.) under the different temperatures. The experments included acute toxicity, avoidance reaction, taste and odor thre-shold determination, uptake and loss of phenol and histophathological examination offish livers. The results indicated that 48-h LC50 values of fish were at 20.0℃,23.0℃ and25.0℃ being 22.5--64.8, 25.20--70.10 and 27.10--75.61 mg/l respectively. Theexperiments also show that the fish did not avoid from phenol-polluted water. The tasteor odor concentration threshold for phenol was detected to be as low as 0.01mg/l. Theuptake of phenol into fish body tissue was found to be rapid and the discharge of it wasrapid as wall, by exposing to clean water, within 8h an equilibrium concentration at-tained. Histological examinations indicated that samples of fishes were treated with phenolat concentrations ranging from 1.0 to 5.0mg/l for at least 9 days, the followingchanges were observed in the liver tissue: formation of a number of vacuoles; enlar-gement of nuclei of some cells; and contraction and deformation of the nuclear mem-brane of some cells. After the studies on the toxicity of phenol to fish, it is suggested that phenolcontent in the water for fish culture should not exceed 0.001mg/l in order to ensurethe good quality of fish meat.