JUNEAU, Alaska — Twelve students and two adults were served floor sealant instead of milk when containers apparently were mixed up at an Alaska elementary school used for a day care summer program, officials said Wednesday.
According to Bridget Weiss, superintendent for the Juneau School District, the incident is under investigation and the Juneau Police Department is involved, KTOO-TV reported.
Weiss said that several students complained of burning sensations in their mouths, and at least one child was treated at an area hospital, according to The Associated Press.
"Some of the children were back in school on Wednesday, but not Donna Baldwin’s grandson.
— Jennifer Pemberton (@YearofJen) June 15, 2022
She said that when she picked the 8-year-old boy up on Tuesday, he burst into tears and asked if he was going to die."https://t.co/TbbUntB1Le
The students, ages 5 to 12, were participating in the RALLY summer program at Juneau’s Sitʼ Eeti Shaanáx̱-Glacier Valley Elementary School, KTOO reported. The children were served the sealant during breakfast at the school, according to the television station. All food items were provided by a contractor and served by staff members, the AP reported.
The sealant was a product called Hillyard Seal 341, according to KTOO. Its safety data sheet says the fluid is “expected to be a low ingestion hazard.”
Weiss said the fluid was mistaken for milk.
“Which sounds hard to believe, but if you have yourself used anything similar, it is surprising, Weiss told KTOO. “It is white, milky fluid.”
Poison control officials and parents were contacted by the school district, according to the AP. The RALLY program did not respond to requests for comment from KTOO.
“I don’t see my daughter going there anymore,” Barry Nydam, whose 7-year-old drank the sealant, told KTOO. “You’d have to have the people running it removed and new people running it.”
Donna Baldwin said that her 8-year-old grandson burst into tears when he was picked up from school and asked if he was going to die, the television station reported.
“The more I process, the madder I get that it was not immediately taken care of,” Baldwin told KTOO on Wednesday. “If I was there, I would have called medical right away. This was minimized, and it’s not OK.”
Weiss said the milk and the floor sealant both come in large plastic bags that are stored inside cardboard boxes, according to the AP. For the milk, the pouch is removed from the box and placed inside a dispenser instead of cartons to serve with meals.
Both the milk and sealant were stored at a district commodity storage site off-campus, the superintendent said.
Weiss said that boxes with sealant in large pouches were “stored or moved on the same pallet as large pouches of milk that were also in cardboard boxes.”
“That shouldn’t have happened. So we don’t ever transport or store chemicals with commodities, right?” Weiss told KTOO. “Those are two very separate things.”
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