Caption: Children from the Growing Tree Learning Center II daycare center in Jersey City, N.J., who accidentally ingested a mixture of water and bleach are placed on an EMT bus to be brought to the Jersey City Medical Center on Thursday, Sept. 11, 2014. More than two dozen children and two adults accidentally drank a mixture of bleach and water at a day care center Thursday and were briefly hospitalized. Photo: Joe Shine, AP

Reuters, September 11, 2014

Twenty-eight preschoolers and two adults mistakenly drank bleach at snack time at a New Jersey day care center on Thursday and were taken to a hospital after some complained their stomachs were burning.

The children, aged 3 and 4, and adult staff members of the Growing Tree Learning Center in downtown Jersey City were transported in five ambulances to the Jersey City Medical Center after a late-morning call to 911, said Mark Rabson, a hospital spokesman. He said some complained of light-headedness, others of upset stomachs.

By mid afternoon, all 30 were in stable condition and were being discharged, Rabson said.

“There was a poisoning and many children were injured,” he said, adding the children were walking on their own or were being carried out by their parents and “have smiles on their faces.”

Keith Kearney, executive director of United Cerebral Palsy of Hudson County, which runs the day care center that is open to all community members and serves 65 children from infants to age 4, said he had heard no reports of injuries and that the hospital visits were a precaution.

“We had an incident where one of the staff in the kitchen used the cleaning solution bottle to pour water for some of the children,” Kearney said.