Newtype Students | The Lead Poisoning Incident Is Illogical

I am now seriously raising doubts about the “pigment theory” in the lead poisoning incident at Tianshui Kindergarten.

First, the kindergarten’s motivation to use lead-containing pigments to make pastries is insufficient. The price of food coloring itself is very low, and even if it is replaced with pigments, the price difference that can be brought is extremely limited.

Secondly, the feasibility of using lead-containing pigments to make pastries is problematic. Pigments, dyes, and food coloring are three completely different things, and their physical properties are also significantly different. Pigments have solvents that can flow and evaporate, as well as colloids that maintain adhesion after drying. And these two things are difficult to do without odor.

Moreover, the pigment itself is sticky and needs to be diluted before adding it to the dough; food coloring can be used directly by dripping it in, and even for convenience, the latter is more suitable.

Third, judging from the surveillance video (Figure 1), the kitchen staff used a wide-mouth plastic bottle, and the bottle mouth was clean and colorless, indicating that it contained powder rather than liquid pigment.

I checked on Taobao, and large-packaged food coloring powder usually uses this type of plastic bottle (Figure 2), and the amount used in the picture also matches the usual amount of food coloring powder.

Some people say whether the painting pigment powder is also packed like this? I checked, and painting pigment powder is generally like Figure 3 on Taobao. I searched for four pages on Taobao with the keyword “painting pigment powder”, and none of the painting pigment powders were packaged like this.

More bizarrely, some painting pigments appeared at the end of the Xinhua News Agency’s news video (Figure 4), and were not marked as “data pictures”, which clearly guided everyone to believe that these pigments were real shots of the seized evidence. But why should evidence be coded? In fact, this picture is obviously from a product on Taobao (Figure 5).

Fourth, and also a very critical point – any news reports and official announcements usually clearly state the “time, place, people, and event process”. In this announcement, the investigation information has been refined to “the principal and investors agreed that the kitchen staff would purchase painting pigments online”, but no time information was given: you know, the online shopping time and the time of adding pigments can be accurately located, and there is no reason not to say it in the announcement.

Why not say it? Combined with the recent situation of children going to Shanghai for treatment, and Shanghai experts said that the children have been poisoned for at least three months, you might as well think about it yourself.

Update Fifth, the announcement shows that the lead content of the two samples was 1052 mg/kg and 1340 mg/kg, respectively. What is this concept? The current upper limit of lead content in building coatings in China is 90 mg/kg. In other words, if these kitchen staff bought the coatings from regular channels, the lead content of these coatings would not even reach 10% of the two pastries. May I ask, are they cooking or refining?