Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, November 26, 2002
70 Children Hospitalized for Poisoning in Southeast China
Seventy kindergarten students and two teachers were hospitalized in Southeast China after eating a school lunch of corn porridge laced with rat poison, the South China Metropolis Daily reports Tuesday.
Seventy kindergarten students and two teachers were hospitalized in Southeast China after eating a school lunch of corn porridge laced with rat poison, the South China Metropolis Daily reports Tuesday.
After eating the tainted porridge Monday, children and teachers at Anle Kindergarten in Huangpo, a town in Guangdong province, began to vomit and go into spasms and were immediately sent to hospitals.
Initial analyses indicate that Dushuqiang, a type of rat poison, is the cause of the incident.
Provincial authorities have sent a team of medical experts to the hospitals to help the victims. Local police are investigating possible sources of the poison.
The same type of rat poison was used to kill at least 38 people two months ago in the eastern city of Nanjing, when a snack shop owner used it to poison the food of a rival shop. It has been banned for sale in China since the mid-1990s but remains widely available from illegal producers in rural areas.