Hundreds of Chinese kids fall ill from toxic chemicals at school, state TV reports

The opening of the new 153-acre campus of the Changzhou Foreign Languages School last fall was supposed to mark a bright new era for the institution’s 2,500 seventh-through-12th-graders, many of whom have ambitions of attending college abroad.

But soon after the buildings opened in September, some parents and students noticed strange smells that some likened to rotten eggs. Youngsters began complaining of health problems, including cramps and skin ailments.

Parents began to suspect the area may have been contaminated by chemical and pesticide factories that previously were located across the street from the private school, and urged administrators and the city to investigate. In January, classes were suspended for about two weeks while tests were conducted by provincial and city environmental authorities. Those checks found elevated levels of contaminants, though officials insisted the problem wasn’t very serious.

But this week, parents’ fears appeared to be confirmed by an expose aired on state-run China Central Television that found nearly 500 students had developed illnesses -- including cancer -- and quoted experts saying their ailments were likely linked to toxic substances in the soil and water, including chloroform and benzene.

The CCTV report, aired Sunday, has sparked national outrage. The Ministry of Education announced that it was sending an inspection team to the school and the Ministry of Environmental Protection said that it was working with the Jiangsu provincial government to investigate the case.

Environmental groups pounced on the report as yet another example of China’s insufficient enforcement of ecological standards.

“The tragedy that has occurred in Changzhou shows just how dangerously lax China’s hazardous chemical management is,” said Ada Kong, Greenpeace East Asia toxics campaign manager.

Although the CCTV report and the government response seemed to indicate a robust official reaction to an alarming scandal, the school has remained open. A woman in the admissions department who answered the phone Tuesday said the school was functioning as normal and “all the students were well.”

On its website, the school posted a message from the Changzhou Institute of Environmental Sciences saying that two companies had collected air, soil and groundwater samples at the school in late March and that both firms found the levels of toxic substances including formaldehyde, TVOC, benzene, Toluene and Xylene to be below national limits. The message said the soil and groundwater “satisfy the school environment criteria.”

The CCTV report said 641 students at the school had undergone physical examinations, with 493 diagnosed with illnesses including bronchitis, dermatitis, lymphoma and leukemia. However, the report did not detail how many cases of each disease were found.

Ex-employees of the chemical plants interviewed on camera by CCTV said they had buried toxic materials nearby and released untreated wastewater into waterways.

The CCTV segment indicated that the hazards were well known even before construction of the school began. A report after the factories were closed about six years ago found extreme amounts of toxic substances in the area around the proposed campus -- including chlorobenzene levels 78,899 times the permitted levels in soil and 94,799 times the permitted levels in groundwater, CCTV said. Carbon tectrachloride levels were found to be 22,699 times the national limits. That probe also found elevated levels of lead, cadmium and mercury.

Even so, local officials gave the school permission to relocate to the area. (After the chemical factories were moved, Changzhou authorities had also considered turning the area into an “ecological park,” CCTV reported.)

CCTV said that tests conducted for its own investigation had revealed alarming amounts of toxic substances in the soil and groundwater at the school. Pan Xiaochuan, a professor of public health at Peking University, told the channel that there were “absolutely” carcinogens on the campus and that long exposure to them could cause cancer.

Parents have staged protests outside local government offices, demanding answers and accountability. Some held signs reading, “Get away from toxic land!”

Greenpeace called on the government to investigate the precise origins of the incident and to establish a comprehensive hazardous chemicals management system to prevent a repeat of the situation in Changzhou.

“Polluted School” has become a hot topic on the Chinese Internet, with more than 45 million views on the Sina Weibo microblog platform. “It almost took half a year to get this tragedy exposed. There’s so much hiding! Suppressing! Covering up! This is so serious!” wrote one user.

But some students took to the Web to defend the school and play down the concerns.

Wrote one: “As a student from Changzhou Foreign Languages School, I want to say thank you all for your concerns about us. … A lot of classmates and teachers left school. I don’t know whether the experts were telling the truth, but I’ve been drinking water here for more than half a year and I’m fine. And I know there hasn’t been any case of serious illness here.”

Besides CCTV, other Chinese media have reported on contaminants near the school site. Students at Changzhou Trina International School, which is adjacent to the Changzhou Foreign Languages School, had complained of ailments back in 2014, according to Modern Express, a paper under the official New China News Agency. Caixin, a magazine, and the Paper, another Chinese news site, have also detailed concerns about environmental hazards in the area.

Yingzhi Yang and Nicole Liu in The Times’ Beijing bureau contributed to this report.