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.

School Kitchens Flunk Health Inspections

By: Helena Bottemiller

FoodSafetyNews.com

Oct 14, 2010

More than half of the school kitchens in the Philadelphia School District failed the last round of health inspections, according to state records analyzed by Philadelphia Daily News.

The worst offenders appeared to be charter schools, which were 66 percent out of compliance, compared with the 53 percent failure rate across the district.  According to The Daily News, some schools on the list had as 20 significant violations, ranging from "mouse feces found on cooking utensils to food being stored next to chemicals."