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Twelve children and two adults were served floor sealant instead of milk at a summer camp at an Alaska elementary school after an apparent mix-up, school district officials said.
Several students complained of burning sensations in their mouths and throats after drinking the foul-tasting liquid — and at least one child was treated at a hospital after the Tuesday morning incident in Juneau, Superintendent Bridget Weiss said Wednesday.
Juneau police are leading the investigation of how the industrial product ended up in the children’s breakfast at Sitʼ Eeti Shaanáx̱-Glacier Valley Elementary. The RALLY day care program at the school is for kids 5 to 12.
All food items including milk from a dispenser were provided by an outside contractor, NANA Management Services, and served by staff. The breakfast items were put on trays, which students took to tables to eat.
Shortly after, children began complaining that the milk tasted bad and caused burning in their mouths and throats.
After school district and contract personnel looked at the container label, it was discovered the clear plastic bag of milk that had been placed in the dispenser was actually a floor sealant that looks like milk.
Poison control officials were contacted as well as parents. Two of the children who were picked up by their parents may have sought medical advice, the district said.
Barry Nydam told the station KTOO that his 7-year-old daughter drank some of the sealant and later complained of having an upset stomach. He said he was shocked and angry.
“I don’t see my daughter going there anymore,” he said. “You’d have to have the people running it removed and new people running it.”
His wife, Rhyan Nydam, said summer camp officials waited three hours to notify her of what had happened, and initially told that her daughter had ingested paint thinner, not floor sealant.
“I just can’t believe it took so long even just to tell me, you know? If I wanted to run my kid to the hospital, I wouldn’t have even known,” she said.
Weiss said the milk and the floor sealant — a product called Hillyard Seal 341 — which is also a milky, white substance, both come in large plastic bags that are stored in cardboard boxes.
For the milk, the pouch is removed from the box and placed in the dispenser to serve with meals instead of in cartons.
Both the milk and sealant were stored at a district commodity storage site off campus.
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Weiss said that somehow, 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.”
“We don’t know how that happened, but they were all put on the same pallet,” she said. “That pallet was delivered, and the assumption was that it was milk because that’s what we thought was being delivered.”
Part of the investigation will be to determine why food items were stored in the same building as chemicals. Juneau police said they do not suspect criminality at this time.
There was no odor or chemical smell to the sealant, but school standards dictate that any chemical used must have a low ingestion risk.
“That was true of the sealant, so our students are doing fine,” she said. A couple of children still had upset stomachs Tuesday evening, but many others were feeling well, she said.
The sealant was removed and placed in chemical storage, and the school district had a state food inspector on site Wednesday morning to verify all proper protocols were in place.
NANA Management Services said in a statement that after it learned of the incident in Juneau, the company immediately sent a safety team to the site.
“We are in the midst of a comprehensive investigation that will look at every contributing factor to determine exactly what happened and to identify potential safety measures,” the company said.