Outwood Academy: Experts baffled by school illness

Experts have struggled to explain how 40 children fell ill in one school in the UK after an Armistice Day service in which four pupils fainted.

Toxic exposure and psychological triggering have been suggested following the spate of illness on Wednesday at Outwood Academy School in Ripon, North Yorkshire.

Prof David Coggon, Professor of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the University of Southampton, said: “Fortunately, incidents like this are rare, so we cannot say statistically what is the most likely cause from past experience.

“However the possibilities include an unusual acute toxic exposure, and a psychologically mediated response, perhaps triggered by one child fainting in hot and stuffy conditions, and growing anxiety as others also became ill.

“To distinguish between these possibilities, health professionals will first need to make clinical assessments of the individual children who have become ill, and check the school for any possible sources of unusual hazardous exposures.

“It may also help to compare the characteristics of children who did and did not become ill, e.g. were those affected all in the same room, and were they all near to each other?”