West Bank salt factory tackles iodine health deficiency

The West Bank Salt factory has begun producing iodized salt after recent reports which discovered that many children from the Palestinian territories are suffering from iodine deficiency.

The factory which is based in a restricted Israeli military area along the Dead Sea shoreline near the town of Jericho became equipped with advanced machinery to speed up the manufacturing process and incorporate iodine into the production process of table salt.

“The factory is owned by the West Bank Salt Company which was established in 1970. The factory has been developed several times. In the last three to four months, we updated the machines in the factory, and we now have new production machines. We produce table salt and industrial salt. The factory produces 50 tonnes every day,” says Ali Edais, who heads the factory's production department.

According to a 2005 report by the Food and Agricultural Organization, around 15 percent of Palestinian school children, predominantly from south of the West Bank and Jericho, were diagnosed with goiter, a thyroid swelling condition caused by iodine deficiency.

A small pump dispenses iodine into salt that passes by on a conveyor belt at the factory, resulting in iodized salt.

The salt factory which now specializes in iodized salt not only supplies to the local market, accounting for 80 percent of consumption, but also exports some of the product to regional countries and beyond.

Kazem Muaget, head of the Chamber of Commerce, industry and Agriculture in Jericho says the body cannot do much to resolve production, access, and trade issues brought on by the location of the factory, Area C, where 60 percent of the West Bank is completely controlled by Israel.

This causes difficulty for the company to obtain permits for workers, according to Ali Edais, head of the production department at the factory.

“It is a closed military area. We enter it by getting permits from the DCO (District Co-ordination office) or the (Israeli Civil Administration office). The army is usually here and asks us what we are doing and where we are going. They allow some people to enter and others not,” he said.

Despite economic adversity and recent Israeli-enforced bans on manufacturing products and restrictions on military areas such as the Dead Sea, the lone Palestinian-owned salt factory continues to cater to the local market by producing 25 kilo nylon bags of iodized salt.

The Dead Sea is known to be one of the world’s most saline bodies of water, around eight times saltier than the ocean, its minerals valued for their cosmetic and health benefits for centuries.