France, June 22 -- The report's authors say the biggest concern is not what ends up in consumers' cups, but the health and environmental damage linked to intensive coffee farming.

"Poison in Your Coffee", was compiled by Coffee Watch, an NGO, and draws on several hundred scientific studies examining the health and environmental impacts of intensive coffee farming.

"Our report is our effort to sound the alarm," Etelle Higonnet, one of the report's authors, told RFI.

"There are traces of pesticide residues in one in five cups of coffee that consumers drink. But the real catastrophe is that workers are being poisoned."

Coffee is one of the world's most pesticide-intensive crops, the report said. In Kenya, for example, coffee farming acco...