{"id":41678,"date":"2025-12-18T16:29:50","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T14:29:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/?p=41678"},"modified":"2025-12-18T16:34:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T14:34:20","slug":"study-plastic-waste-from-jerusalems-runoff-has-accumulated-in-the-dead-sea-since-2000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/en\/study-plastic-waste-from-jerusalems-runoff-has-accumulated-in-the-dead-sea-since-2000\/","title":{"rendered":"Study: Plastic waste from Jerusalem\u2019s runoff has accumulated in the Dead Sea since 2000"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Study: Plastic waste from Jerusalem\u2019s runoff has accumulated in the Dead Sea since 2000<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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07.12.2025<\/p>

Researchers from the Charney School have uncovered how plastic waste carried by Kidron stream floods has accumulated along the retreating shores of the Dead Sea since 2000\u2014and how extreme environmental conditions accelerate its breakdown into microplastics.
The study, led by Prof. Beverly Goodman-Tchernov, Prof. Michael Lazar, and Dr. Akos Kalman, shows that the rapidly forming coastal terraces act as a natural archive of pollution. Analysis of sediment samples revealed that most microplastic fragments originate from common packaging materials such as bags and bottles. Terraces formed before 2000 contained no plastic, while younger terraces already hold hundreds of kilograms of waste. If the trend continues, a single terrace could accumulate nearly one ton of plastic by 2030.\u00a0Some debris is trapped in sinkholes and cracks, embedding plastic into sediment layers and potentially leaving a lasting geological marker of human activity. The good news: most plastic remains floating and concentrated along the shore, offering a critical window for intervention before burial makes cleanup impossible.<\/p>

The study was recently featured in the media:
Israel National News\u00a0<\/a>
Israel Science Info<\/a>
The Jewish Edition<\/a>
Haaretz<\/a><\/p><\/div>

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Researchers from the Charney School have uncovered how plastic waste carried by Kidron stream floods has accumulated along the retreating shores of the Dead Sea since 2000 – and how extreme environmental conditions accelerate its breakdown into microplastics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":41681,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_header_footer","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[107,103,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-media","category-news","category-news-archive","entry","has-media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}