Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, January 14, 2011
Seven San Francisco middle school students were taken to hospitals Thursday after ingesting small amounts of rat poison they found on top of a classroom filing cabinet, thinking the single blue cube was candy, fire officials said.
The Martin Luther King Jr. students, who showed no symptoms other than fear, were transported to three local hospitals, but were not expected to suffer any harmful consequences, said Fire Department spokeswoman Mindy Talmadge.
Talmadge said one of the students found the small cube and took a little nibble and told classmates it tasted like a cookie. Six others, boys and girls ranging in age from 10 to 12, then licked or bit pieces of the 1.5-inch cube of poison and either swallowed or spit it out.
"One of the young ladies who participated in it apparently realized it wasn't a good thing to do," Talmadge said. She called her father, who called 911. A teacher was alerted and school officials called Poison Control, which said the substance wasn't highly dangerous, district officials said.
The chemical in the rodenticide was bromadiolone, a blood thinner, Talmadge said. Emergency crews also contacted the manufacturer, which informed them that there has never been a known case of someone being poisoned by the product. "This particular poison, for human consumption, would have to be consumed in a much larger quantity to be toxic," Talmadge said.
The rat bait is not supposed to be in classrooms, she said. She said it is also not procedure, when the bait is used, to place it on cardboard, where the children said they found it.
It was unclear how it got in the classroom or on the cardboard. District officials said they were investigating the matter. An inspection found no other cubes in classrooms. Some pieces were found on the ground, probably dropped by students, Talmadge said.
The incident scared the children and their parents, but ended up being just a good life lesson for the middle schoolers, she said. "It's going to end up as an educational story more than anything," Talmadge said.
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This article appeared on page C - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle.
