China says school condemned in TV pollution report is safe

BEIJING: Investigators in eastern China said they have not found high levels of pollution around a school where an explosive state television report in April said hundreds of kids had fallen sick with illnesses including leukemia.

Soil, air and water contamination levels at the Changzhou Foreign Language School, which was built near recently closed chemical plants about 160 kilometers (100 miles) northwest of Shanghai, were found to be within acceptable levels, according to state media.

The results of the three-month investigation appear to contradict reports that had sparked mass outrage earlier this year at a time when China was grappling with a series of public health scandals.

In April, China’s central government moved swiftly to launch a probe just hours after state broadcaster China Central Television, or CCTV, aired a segment saying that 500 kids had fallen ill and that soil tests showed toxic chemical levels at 95,000 times the national limit.

The CCTV segment, which garnered tens of millions of online views a day after it came out, appeared to corroborate investi- gations by other news outlets that showed environmental regulators had nixed plans for a school at the site, but construction moved ahead anyway. Former employees of a pesticide company said they regularly buried waste and suffered skin ailments, according to the reports, which were dismissed as overblown by school officials.