Lack of iodine and folic acid in table salt in Israel leads to birth defects, study shows

• Published date: 13 March 2024
• Author: JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Despite success in many areas of preventive health care such as low infant mortality, it is important to keep up with other international standards, such as prevention of micronutrient deficiency, said Prof. Aron M. Troen (of the Hebrew University's biochemistry, food science and nutrition department); Prof. Ronit Endevelt (director of the ministry's nutrition division), ministry chief toxicologist Dr. Tamar Berman, and Prof. (emeritus) Ted Tulchinsky (of the university's Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine and former ministry coordinator of public health services for the West Bank and Gaza)

They noted that Israeli studies of iodine show deficiency of iodine levels in pregnant women and in school-age children and is the main cause of brain damage in childhood. It results in impaired cognitive and motor development that affects children permanently. The effect of low iodine intake levels is damaging to physical and mental development, lowering IQ by up to 12%.

One can buy iodized salt in Israeli supermarkets, but it is much more expensive than ordinary table salt, which is widely consumed. Fortification of salt has not been required by the ministry despite repeated recommendations by experts," they stated, "but the failure to enact this has been made more severe by an increasing reliance on desalinated seawater, reducing even the limited iodine source nature provides."

The same is true, they said, in the ministry's "failing its duty to address many micronutrient deficiencies by failure to keep up with current international standards, such as vitamin A and D in all milk, folic acid and other micronutrients as strongly recommended in WHO in a resolution adopted in 2023."

The public-health experts published their findings two years ago in the Israel Journal of Health Policy Research under the title "Results of the national biomonitoring program show persistent iodine deficiency in Israel."

Their research "highlights the critical need for public health surveillance of nutritional and environmental exposures using human biomonitoring. Iodine deficiency is easily prevented at a low cost. The best and least- expensive method of preventing iodine deficiency disorder is by simply iodizing salt, which is now done in many countries."

Meanwhile, a team of international researchers that included scientists at the University of Central Florida and at Emory University in Georgia have just published a study showing that...