4 students faint in school laboratory after ‘inhaling’ chemical in UP’s Barabanki

Four class 6 students of a private college fell unconscious after smelling/inhaling chemicals in their school’s chemistry laboratory while doing practical exercises in Sharifabad village under Satrikh police station area in Barabanki district in Uttar Pradesh on Friday said an official aware of the incident.

At the time of the incident, 32 students were taking practical classes at Shaheed Bhagat Singh Inter College. College officials hurriedly removed all students from the class and admitted the unconscious ones to the community health center, where two of them were treated and sent home.

The remaining two students, whose condition was considered serious, were referred to the district hospital, Barabanki district inspector of schools OP Tripathi said. College principal Shiv Kumar said that during the practical class, some students inhaled some chemical from the test tube and started coughing.

He said the student developed difficulty breathing and four of them were hospitalized. “Their condition is normal,” he said. “Fortunately, no serious accidents happened. Many types of chemicals were also kept in the laboratory. A serious accident could have occurred if these chemicals had caught fire. All the students were terrified,” said college manager Umesh Mishra.

Mishra said one of the affected students was an asthma patient and was not carrying his inhaler. Consequently, the boy developed complications, he said. Student Harshit Singh, undergoing treatment at the district hospital, said class teacher Gemini Kumar took the students to the laboratory for practical classes.

After mixing chemicals in a test tube, pink smoke came out and after some time there was a loud explosion. The students who were caught in the smoke fell unconscious. Another student, Ashish Verma, said, “I was doing an experiment in the laboratory and the amount of acid in the chemical increased due to the accident.”