Students Mistake Poison for Candy

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.

Food Tainted with Chemical Sickens Employees

By: Katherine Perry
95.9 WATD, Marshfield Broadcasting Company

Two Bridgewater State University employees were taken to the hospital after they were sickened by an unknown chemical Thursday.

At 11:41 a.m. the Bridgewater fire department was called to Bridgewater State University and began a tier 1 haz-mat response-- the least serious response level.

Two food service employees were working near a dishwasher and food disposal area in a kitchen in the east campus commons, when they became ill.

Food Allergy Concerns on the Rise

Why are food allergies on the rise?

By: Elizabeth Landau, CNN

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Children's Hospital Boston has seen an increase in ER visits from allergic reactions to foods
• A study speculates gut bacteria has something to do with food allergies
• Another idea is that children need to get exposed to common allergens earlier in life

(CNN) -- Two-year-old Ethan Wily had a cold recently, so at first it wasn't surprising that he started coughing last week after eating some pistachio gelato.

But he started coughing up mucus, and then gasping for air. His parents gave him an antihistamine, but it didn't stop the reaction. By the time the boy's parents brought him to their local hospital, he could barely breathe.

"His face was really swollen. He looked like an alien," said Ethan's father, Preston Wily of Lehi, Utah. "We didn't have any idea an allergy could be so bad."

He said the child had shown only a somewhat mild reaction to peanuts before this.

It seems like more and more children in the U.S. are developing food allergies, and there's data to back that up. The number of kids with food allergies went up 18 percent from 1997 to 2007, according to the U.S.