STORY: Lebanese farmer Zakaria Farah fears his fields are not safe to grow crops in.

The 30-year-old worries the land has been poisoned by the Israeli military's use of white phosphorus since October.

When exchanges of fire erupted between Israel and Hezbollah in parallel with the Gaza war.

"We are stuck sitting in our houses, it's been eight months - entering the ninth month. No one is feeling with us; no one feels for the daily suffering in our morale. We are suffering every minute. We are afraid for our future, we're afraid for the future of our children, for the future of our land. What can we eat? What can we drink? Maybe the groundwater has phosphorus, we don't know if yes or no. This is why... We are really, really, really living in hell."

White phosphorus munitions are a chemical weapon and can be used in war to make smoke screens, mark targets or burn buildings.

However, international conventions prohibit their use against military targets located among civilians.

Lebanon is a party to those international protocols, while Israel is not.

In June, Human Rights Watch said it had verified the use of white phosphorus in at least 17 municipalities in southern Lebanon since October, including some unlawfully over populated residential areas.

Outside the southern town of Qlayaa, with shelling in the distance, Farah collected earth samples to send to the American University of Beirut for testing.

Some farmers have left altogether. But Farah hopes he can learn whether he can plant his fields once hostilities end.

"One feels sorry for his land, but what can we do?"

Dr. Rami Zurayk, a soil chemist at AUB, has developed a research protocol to collect and examine the samples from various distances from the impact sites.

"So what we're looking for is what happens to the soils and to the plants in locations that have received white phosphorus bombing. Does the phosphorus remain? In what concentrations? Does it disappear?"

They still need more samples to obtain a conclusive outcome.

However farmers are unwilling to gather more soil due to the steady pace of Israeli shelling.

''We have obtained a few results. They are too few to be able to talk about the general area, but they are sufficient for us to say that our methodology is reliable."

Green Southerners, a collective of ecologists and nature lovers in Lebanon's south, have filmed several incidents of shelling they say show tell-tale signs of white phosphorous attacks:

Dozens of streams of white bursting out of a munition over farmlands.

The group's chairman told Reuters the attacks amount to ecocide - deliberate or negligent mass destruction of a natural environment by humans.

The Israeli military told Reuters the "primary smoke shells" it used do not contain white phosphorus.

It said smoke shells that do include white phosphorus can be used to create smokescreens, and that it quote "uses only lawful means of warfare."