Israel’s Littoral Littered With Loads of Polluting Plastic Particles

A study by Tel Aviv University (TAU) and the Mediterranean Sea Research Center of Israel has revealed that Israel’s Mediterranean shores are polluted with more than 2 million tons of microplastics, TAU announced on Sunday. The research, published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin, was conducted by examining beach sand samples in a lab. It found that the main sources of plastic contamination were food packaging, single-use plastic products, and fishing nets. Most of the plastics came from sources on land, such as food packaging, rather than plastics of sea origin, such as fishing nets. The most plastic-polluted beaches are in the cities of Tel Aviv and Hadera, both of which are located near stream estuaries. The stream waters carry the microplastic particles into the sea, intensifying beach contamination. Microplastics, resulting from the natural breakdown of plastic items into smaller and smaller particles, are difficult to remove from the sea, often end up swallowed by fish and introduced into the marine ecosystem, and pose a greater risk to the environment and human health than macroplastic pollution.