Changzhou, Jiangsu responds to school pollution incident: Monitoring levels are within limits; only 4 people took sick leave

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According to Polaris Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection Network, since last November, Liu Li (a pseudonym), an eighth-grade student at Changzhou Foreign Language School in Jiangsu, has been smelling a strange odor on campus. He initially thought it was fog. “Later, the odor became more and more intense.” He heard that the strange smell was coming from across the school, where there used to be a chemical plant, and rumors about this \"toxic area\" were increasing. When the parents found out, they took him to the hospital specifically for a check-up; the doctor said the child had a cold and needed to rest. Another eighth-grade student, Zhang De (a pseudonym), was found to have swollen lymph nodes after a examination; many of the 43 students in his class exhibited similar symptoms. “A \"toxic\" school: \"After my daughter started attending this school, she began to lose hair constantly. She went to the hospital for a check-up, and her lymph nodes were greatly swollen.\" ”After reading the news report, a parent decided to take their daughter for another check-up. According to a \"summary table of voluntary health checks conducted by students in grades 7 and 8 at Changwai School, along with their voluntary submission of the test results\" provided by a parent, the total number of individuals included in the statistics was 641, of whom 493 had abnormal test results, accounting for 76.9%. The “abnormal” conditions included 262 cases of thyroid nodules, 194 cases of enlarged or nodular lymph nodes, and 90 cases of abnormalities in other blood parameters; most students exhibited multiple such abnormal symptoms at the same time. The parent provided the test reports from two medical examinations conducted at the end of January and the end of March this year for their 13-year-old child; these reports indicated the presence of a nodule in the left lobe of the thyroid gland, as well as enlarged lymph nodes in both sides of the neck, under the jaw, and in the armpits. “In mid-January 2016, parents spontaneously protested at the school entrance, hoping that the school would move away from its current location, but to this day the school has not given us a clear response. ”said Mr. Zhang, the parent. The Changzhou Health and Family Planning Commission organized a medical expert team to regularly analyze the health status of students. Hua Fei, head of the medical expert team and vice president of Changzhou First People’s Hospital, explained that from January 11 to 9 a.m. on February 29 this year, eight hospitals in Changzhou received 597 students from Changzhou Foreign Languages School for medical consultations and examinations. Among them, 464 had normal test results, while 133 had abnormal values in some test indicators. Among them, 71 had thyroid nodules, 22 had enlarged cervical lymph nodes, 17 had thyroid nodules accompanied by enlarged cervical lymph nodes, 5 had abnormal liver function, 8 had abnormal kidney function, 3 had bronchitis, 2 had Hashimoto’s disease, 1 had enlarged left inguinal lymph nodes, and WBC