Tests need to look beneath the surface

A recent school matting problem matters to both students' health and industrial standards.

A kindergarten in Pujiang, East China's Zhejiang province, laid new plastic safety matting in its playground in October. The matting emitted a pungent smell and has been blamed for the illnesses of at least 61 children, most of whom sat in classrooms on the ground floor in the teaching building near the playground and exhibited symptoms of allergies and inflammation. The township education authority has entrusted a third party agency to test the material used for the matting, and said it would take 10 days to publish the results.

Although it is possible that the report will indicate that the plastic matting passed all the tests; that is not the whole of the problem.