An official investigation has found that dozens of provincial officials and hospital staff tried to cover up a lead poisoning case that made hundreds of children sick in north-west China and sparked widespread outrage.
Authorities have said that officials tampered with the blood tests of the pupils who were poisoned at the privately-owned Peixin Kindergarten in Tianshui city, and had also accepted bribes from an investor in the school while neglecting food safety inspections across several other pre-schools, their report said.
Chefs at the facility had added colourful toxic paint to pupils’ food to “enhance the look” of the meals and attract more scholars, the report said.
The BBC reports that food samples were later found to contain lead 2 000 times in excess of the national safety limit.
Eight people were initially detained and six of them – including the principal, cooks, and an investor – have been arrested.
Ten other officials will face “formal accounting procedures” while another 17 people are under disciplinary investigation.
Authorities revealed on 8 July that 235 children from the kindergarten were being treated in hospital for lead poisoning after eating steamed red date cakes and sausage corn buns.
As of Sunday, 234 of them have been discharged.
The Gansu Provincial Centre for Disease Control and Prevention had apparently been ordered to test 267 children and staff at the school after some showed symptoms earlier this month, but officials “did not take the work seriously”, with the person in charge of the tests “seriously violating operating procedures, which distorted the results”, according to the report.
It also accused staff at the Tianshui No 2 People’s Hospital of “serious dereliction of duty” and described the institution’s management of the case as “chaotic”.
On Monday, China published a set of national guidelines for the provision of meals at schools. Among other things, it mandates that every new batch of food must be tested, and that rice, flour and cooking oil must be bought at centralised procurement points.
BBC article – China finds cover-up in lead poisoning of 200 children (Open access)
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
China widens children’s lead poisoning probe
200 children with lead poisoning after Chinese school adds paint to food
Childhood lead exposure possibly linked to lower IQ levels – US study