israel may soon become a place where there is not a drop of freshwater to drink. It is well established that seawater seeps into coastal aquifers and contaminates them with salts. Now Brian Berkowitz and his colleagues from Israel-based Weizmann Institute of Science claim that their country's aquifers are even polluted by toxic organic pollutants that are often found in seawater. To date, it was thought that the toxic compounds are not very soluble. But Berkowitz's team shows that the salinity difference between the waters of the sea and the aquifer creates a force that dissolves the pollutants.

The researchers mimicked the interface of an aquifer and seawater by using two vessels