Regarding the case of 247/153 children at a kindergarten in Gansu province being poisoned with lead, Chinese public opinion became even more outraged when authorities confirmed that the cause was the school principal deliberately mixing industrial paint into food, in order to make the dishes "look better on camera" to attract students.
According to Chinese state media, including CCTV, Peixin Private Kindergarten in Tianshui City, northwest China's Gansu Province, ordered toxic paint (a total of 3.1 kg) online twice in April last year and February this year. The paint is banned from use in food. The school then mixed the paint into flour to make corn sausage bread and three-color steamed cakes made from jujubes, which they regularly served to children.
According to Maeil Business Newspaper, the worrying thing is that the abnormal health condition of the students has appeared since last year, when many of them were taken to the People's Hospital No. 2 of Thien Thuy City for testing. However, this hospital was accused of falsifying the results, concluding that the students were "normal" even though the lead concentration in their blood exceeded the allowable threshold.
Subsequent tests at Xi’an Central Hospital (in neighboring Shaanxi Province) showed that many children had blood lead levels ranging from 200 to 500 μg/L—two to 10 times higher than the maximum level considered “safe” under Chinese regulations (less than 100 μg/L). According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), children are considered to have lead poisoning if this index exceeds 50 μg/L.
Lead poisoning can cause irreversible damage to the brain and central nervous system, causing memory loss, poor concentration and slow development in children.
More significantly, the Gansu Provincial Center for Disease Control was also found to have violated sampling and testing procedures on July 2 and 3, when the incident first broke. Subsequent test results were also found to have been falsified.
Previously, many Chinese parents and netizens questioned whether Tianshui city officials were deliberately covering up and downplaying the incident.
Chinese media also recalled that 19 years ago, also in Tianshui, there was another mass lead poisoning case, suspected to be caused by pollution from the factory. However, this time, the authorities confirmed that they had investigated and said: No signs of pollution were found in the environment around Peixin Kindergarten, including air, domestic water, groundwater and soil, all of which met environmental quality standards.
Through investigation, the authorities determined that the school principal was the one who directly ordered the chef to use toxic paint, and that the school’s investors approved it. The school is a private, for-profit preschool. Notably, the school principal himself was also poisoned by lead, with a concentration of up to 169.3 μg/L.
The motive for this behavior is believed to be to create colorful dishes for promotional photos, attracting parents to enroll. In the context of the increasing number of private kindergartens in China, the competition for enrollment has become fierce and led to extreme behavior.
According to the test results, the lead content in corn sausage cakes and three-color jujube steamed cakes reached 1,340 mg and 1,052 mg per kg - thousands of times higher than the allowable limit according to China's national food safety standards.
So far, six people have been arrested, including the school's principal, investors and chef. Seventeen others are under investigation.
Of the 251 students and 34 teachers tested, 247 students and 28 teachers had abnormal readings. Of the 234 who had been hospitalized, 234 have been discharged. Authorities said the blood lead levels of those infected had dropped by about 40 percent after treatment.
Source: https://vietnamnet.vn/hieu-truong-lenh-tron-son-vao-thuc-an-de-anh-chup-bat-mat-thu-hut-tuyen-sinh-2425251.html
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