Beijing is scrambling to respond to reports that hundreds of students at a high school built on the site of a former pesticide factory have become ill, in a rare case of public acknowledgment of the dangers of brownfield sites in China.
The Changzhou Foreign Language School moved to a new campus in the industrial city in eastern China last autumn. By December, students were complaining of rashes, nosebleeds and strange smells, according to a series of reports in Chinese media, culminating with a report by state-owned broadcaster CCTV this weekend. Some students had been diagnosed with cancer, the reports said.
On Monday, the environment ministry said it was “attaching great importance” to the case, which comes as the department is preparing an action plan for soil pollution across the country. Two years ago it declassified a report that showed the extent of soil pollution after initially labelling it a “state secret”.