Nursery school children have reportedly been poisoned at a local pool in Northern Italy by a toxic cloud of chlorine gas The incident is believed to have taken place at a leisure centre in Bosco Chiesanuova, in the Italian province of Verona, with 25 people reported to have taken ill.
Around 10 am on Monday, firefighters, medics, police, and even nuclear experts with crisis response experience began helping in evacuating the pool following the gas leak.
The nuclear experts were from a nearby NBCR (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, and Radiological) squad of firefighters.
The Italian Ministry of the Interior describes this squad as “a specialised group of firefighters called to intervene in exceptional situations”.
According to local media, those severely affected by the toxic gas were taken to hospitals in Negrar, Borgo Trento, and Borgo Roma, while others were carried to medical centres in two minibuses.
Nine of the 25 people poisoned were toddlers between the ages of three and six who had been having swimming lessons in the pool.
Four other swimmers have been said to have been seriously affected by the gas.
While the pool’s manager is also understood to be undergoing hospital treatment after inhaling the toxic fumes.
At room temperature, chlorine gas is a yellow-green gas.
Chlorine is poisonous, corrosive, and irritating to the eyes and lungs.
It is mostly used in industry, but it can also be found in some household goods, such as a chemical used to treat swimming pool water.
The incident in Bosco Chiesanuova is believed by investigators to have been triggered by a pool engineer’s miscalculation on the amount of chlorine needed to treat the pool.
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