Kishon river near Haifa Chemicals

A Bedouin of the Kishon, 1913.

Considered the most polluted river in Israel, it has been the subject of controversy regarding the struggle to improve the water quality.

The pollution stems in part from daily contamination for over 40 years with mercury, other heavy metals, and organic chemicals by nearby chemical plants.

It is often claimed today that there are more chemicals than water in the river, and that washing ones hands in this river can cause severe chemical burns.^[1] On several occasions this river (or rather, patches of petrochemical waste on it) has caught fire from the chemical contaminants. Below Histadrut Bridge (Highway 4), after passing the petrochemical industries zone, the pH was 3 or below for most of the time in 2001.

Since 2001, it was discovered that Shayetet 13 veterans had high occurrence of cancer, probably due to training in the polluted Kishon River and Haifa Bay. A commission for investigating the matter didn't find statistical evidences that the diving in the Kishon caused the cancer. However, Minister of Defence, Shaul Mofaz, decided to compensate the divers' families in spite of the commission findings.

A 2002 study found the ability of 3 hours' exposure to Kishon River water to induce DNA damage in rainbow trout liver cells to be on average threefold that of unpolluted water. Notably the lower Kishon^[2] had a markedly elevated genotoxic potential.

A 2000 analysis of the river water revealed

Footnotes

References

• (2002): Genotoxicity of the Kishon River, Israel: the application of an in vitro cellular assay. Mutation Research 518(1): 21?37. (HTML abstract)

External links

• Israel Union for Environmental Defense: Kishon River
• Greenpeace Press Release on Kishon River
• Zalul Environmental Association: Campaign for the Kishon

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