A court in north-west China has sentenced the head of a kindergarten to life in prison after 247 young children were poisoned by lead-laced school meals. The verdict, delivered by the Lanzhou Intermediate People's Court on Friday 16 October 2026, closes the criminal case on one of the most shocking food-safety scandals in recent years — a case in which kitchen staff deliberately mixed inedible paint pigments into children's food to make it look more colourful and appealing. The story is trending per news coverage, and it has struck a nerve worldwide because it arrived just a day after the World Health Organization issued a stark new warning about the global threat of lead poisoning.

Li Huifang, who ran the Heshi Peixin Kindergarten in the Maiji District of Tianshui city in Gansu province, was found guilty of producing and selling toxic and harmful food. Alongside the life sentence, the court stripped her of her political rights for life and ordered the confiscation of 500,000 yuan (about $74,000) of her personal assets. Five other people were sentenced alongside her. The case has become a symbol of what can go wrong when food safety is sacrificed for appearances — and of how severely China's courts can punish — see how court systems work — those responsible.

What happened at the Heshi Peixin Kindergarten

The Heshi Peixin Kindergarten is a private preschool in Tianshui, a city in China's north-western Gansu province. According to a provincial investigation report released in July 2025, contaminated pastries had been served to children and staff at the kindergarten every month since May 2024 — more than a year of repeated exposure before the scandal came to light.

The court found that Li and the kindergarten's executive principal, Zhu Jinglin, instructed staff to add toxic substances to the food served to children and employees so that the meals would look more colourful and attractive. Kitchen workers carried out those instructions, mixing inedible paint pigments into everyday dishes. The pigments were clearly marked as not for food use, investigators found, yet they were used anyway in an apparent attempt to make the kindergarten's meals look better — a selling point for parents choosing a preschool.

The contaminated dishes included steamed red date cakes and sausage corn buns, staples of the kindergarten's menu. When food samples were eventually tested, the results were staggering. The red date cakes contained lead at 1,052 milligrams per kilogram, and the corn sausage rolls at 1,340 milligrams per kilogram. China's national food safety standard limit is 0.5 milligrams per kilogram. In other words, the food served to small children contained roughly 2,000 times the permitted level of lead.

How the poisoning was discovered

The scandal broke in July 2025, when children at the kindergarten began falling ill and blood tests revealed widespread lead contamination. Of the 251 children examined, 247 had abnormal blood lead levels. More than 20 employees were also exposed to the toxic substances. In total, 235 children had to be treated for lead poisoning after eating the contaminated cakes and buns.

Lead poisoning is insidious because its early symptoms can be easy to miss: stomach pain, tiredness, irritability and poor appetite can all be mistaken for ordinary childhood complaints. It was only when blood tests were carried out on a large scale that the full scope of the contamination became clear. Once the results came in, a criminal investigation was opened into the kindergarten's management and kitchen staff, and a wider provincial investigation followed.

All of the affected children received hospital treatment or nutritional interventions at home. By 20 July 2025, most had completed their first round of treatment and had been discharged from hospital. Medical experts reported an average 40.21% reduction in the children's blood lead levels, meeting the projected treatment targets. The Gansu provincial government has pledged continued support for the children's medical care and recovery, though doctors caution that lead's effects on developing brains can be long-lasting and will need ongoing monitoring.

The verdict and the sentences

The Lanzhou Intermediate People's Court handed down its verdict on Friday 16 October 2026, more than a year after the poisoning was uncovered. Six people were sentenced in total:

  • Li Huifang, the kindergarten's head — life imprisonment, stripped of political rights for life, and confiscation of 500,000 yuan in personal assets.
  • Zhu Jinglin, the executive principal — 15 years in prison and a fine of 300,000 yuan.
  • Four kitchen workers, who carried out the orders to add the toxic ingredients — prison terms ranging from six to eight years, plus fines.

The court found that the four kitchen staff had been instructed by Li and Zhu to add toxic and harmful ingredients to food served to children and staff. The verdict brings the criminal proceedings against the six defendants to a close.

Accountability did not stop at the kindergarten's gates. The investigation also led to disciplinary probes involving 10 local officials, including the provincial health commission director and senior leaders in Tianshui. That wider reckoning reflects a central question in the case: how did a practice that went on monthly for more than a year escape detection by the inspections and oversight systems meant to protect children?

Why lead is so dangerous for children

Lead is a naturally occurring toxic metal, and the World Health Organization lists it as one of the 10 chemicals of major public health concern. There is no known safe level of lead exposure: even relatively low exposure can cause irreversible harm, and children are far more vulnerable than adults because their brains and nervous systems are still developing.

Once inside the body, lead spreads to organs including the brain, liver and kidneys, and it is stored in the teeth and bones, where it can accumulate over time. In children, lead exposure can cause irreversible damage to the brain and to physical development. The lifelong consequences can include learning difficulties, behavioural problems and poor health — and because symptoms may not be immediately visible, many cases go unnoticed until significant damage has already occurred. In adults, lead poisoning contributes to cardiovascular and kidney disease.

That is why the numbers in the Tianshui case are so alarming. Months of daily meals at 2,000 times the safety limit meant repeated, sustained exposure during exactly the years when children's brains are developing fastest. The reported 40% fall in blood lead levels after treatment is encouraging, but families and doctors will be watching the children's development for years.

The sentencing landed at a moment of unusual global attention on lead. Just a day earlier, on 15 October 2026, the WHO had urged countries to accelerate efforts to prevent lead exposure, which it estimates causes more than 3.5 million deaths globally each year and affects hundreds of millions of children. The agency says 815 million children have blood lead levels of at least 5 micrograms per decilitre — the level at which its guidelines say exposure should be investigated and reduced. More than one in three children around the world sits above that action level.

The WHO's call came ahead of International Lead Poisoning Prevention Week, which runs from 18 to 26 October 2026. “Lead poisoning should not be stealing children's potential in 2026,” said Bruce Gordon, interim director of the WHO's Department of Environment, Climate Change, One Health and Migration. “We know where many exposures come from and we know how to prevent them. Countries now need to move upstream, removing lead from products and environments before it reaches a child's bloodstream.”

Exposure can come from paint, cookware, cosmetics, spices, informal recycling and industrial contamination, among other sources. Although lead exposure is entirely preventable, fewer than half of all countries have confirmed legally binding controls on lead-containing paint, according to the WHO's latest global assessment. The agency is preparing a Global Action Plan on Lead Mitigation, expected to be presented to the World Health Assembly in 2027, alongside technical guidance to help countries identify major sources of exposure, strengthen regulations and monitor prevention.

The Tianshui case is a grim illustration of why that agenda matters. Here the source was not an old water pipe or a polluted industrial site, but a deliberate decision inside a school kitchen — a setting where parents assume their children are safest — and where children's rights are meant to be protected. That betrayal of trust is a large part of why the story has travelled so far, and why it has prompted such a severe legal response.

What happens next

With the criminal case concluded, attention turns to the children's long-term health and to the wider food-safety system. The Gansu government has promised ongoing support for the affected children's medical care, and the disciplinary probes into local officials suggest further administrative consequences may follow. For parents in China and beyond, the case is a reminder that food safety depends on enforcement as much as on rules: the pigments used at Heshi Peixin were labelled as inedible, the safety limits existed, and the contamination still went on for more than a year.

The case also underlines a broader lesson from the WHO's warning. Lead is one of the world's most serious yet overlooked environmental health threats, and the places it hides — in paint, in cookware, in spices, and, in this shocking case, in a school lunch — are often the most ordinary. Removing it from products and environments before it reaches a child, as the WHO urges, remains the only reliable protection. For the 247 children of Tianshui, that protection came far too late; the court's verdict is the legal system's answer, but their recovery will be measured over years, not in a single sentencing hearing.

Sources: Xinhua via Qazinform; CCTV via The Geneva Times; UN News / World Health Organization; The Sun.