No Java for You! Israel Warns of Lead in Ubiquitous Cafe Coffee Machines
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Naomi Zeveloff January 18, 2017
Tel Aviv’s famous cafe culture received a blow today when the Israeli Health Ministry warned Israelis to steer clear of coffee shops after finding unusually high levels of lead in industrial coffee makers in restaurants, cafes and hotels.
The Health Ministry and Economy Ministry announced nationwide testing for all coffee makers, with recalls of those machines that exceed legal limits for lead, between 10 and 20 parts per billion.
About half of the machines checked have more lead than the legal amount.
The ministry said that there is “no immediate danger,” but told Israelis, and especially pregnant women, to hold off on the java. Lead poisoning can cause miscarriage, and also affect a baby’s development. In adults, it can damage the nervous system and the kidneys.
Contact Naomi Zeveloff at [email protected]
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
