Meanwhile, firefighters were ventilating the school in an attempt to reduce the amount of carbon monoxide, McDaniel said. Other students from the school were taken to Brown Middle School for the rest of the day, and were being released to their parents, Atlanta Public Schools said in a statement on its official Twitter site. 'This wasn’t organized at all,' she said.Īn Atlanta Public Schools spokesman did not immediately return calls for comment.Ī total of 42 students and six adults were taken to hospitals, Atlanta Public Schools said on its official Twitter site. It turned out that her oldest son was taken to the hospital, a fact that Hamilton said she would not have known had it not been for her neighbor. Makisha Hamilton told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that she had no idea anything happened to her two children until running into a neighbor at the school. Some parents, however, criticized the school for its handling of the situation. If it didn't, Hon said, 'A carbon monoxide detector, if appropriately used and installed and checked often, could have very well been a warning for this school system.'ĭamage: Officials say victims only experienced moderate symptoms, including difficulty breathing, nausea and headaches. It was not immediately known if the school had a carbon monoxide detector. 'Luckily those kinds of exposures do not carry significant long-term health risks, especially with the children involved.' 'The good news is that they sound like mild to moderate symptoms,' Hon said. Hon said it was fortunate the children do not appear to have suffered severe symptoms and said that was likely due to a short exposure time and perhaps the location of the leak being some distance from where the children were. A few key differences: Carbon monoxide poisoning generally does not cause a fever and generally a person starts feeling better once he or she is moved to an area with fresh air, Hon said. She said it's easy for initial symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning to be confused with the flu since both include malaise, headache, nausea and vomiting. 'Seventeen hundred parts per million is potentially lethal if exposed to it for a period of time,' said Stephanie Hon, assistant director of the Georgia Poison Center.Ĭhildren could be affected faster than adults and are generally affected at lower parts per million, Hon said.

The colorless, odorless gas can be deadly at that level, one expert said.

Finch elementary