Chinese schoolchildren sickened by rat poison
Seventy nursery school children and two teachers have been taken to hospital in south-eastern China after falling ill from a school lunch of corn porridge laced with rat poison, police said today.
At least two of the children were in a critical condition after eating the tainted porridge yesterday at Anle Kindergarten in Huangpo, a town in Guangdong province, a town police officer said.
The children and teachers began to vomit and go into spasms after eating the porridge, police said.
Police found a Chinese-made rat poison in the food but have not determined how it got there.
School officials were not available for comment, according to a staff member who answered the telephone at the school this morning.
The same type of rat poison, called Dushuqiang, 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.
China has suffered poisoning attacks in the past blamed on business rivalries or people with grudges.
In July, a noodle shop owner in southern China was arrested on charges he poisoned customers at a rival business by putting rat poison in soup sold there, sickening 57 people.
