More than 50 middle-school students in Oregon were served pretzels seasoned with crushed oven cleaner, according to a lawsuit.
A family is suing the Tigard-Tualatin School District for $1 million in damages after their child was sickened by the snack snafu during a school-lunch break at Fowler Middle School in October 2025, according to court documents obtained by KPTV.
That day, 37 pretzels coated with crushed Alto-Sham oven cleaner were served to dozens of sixth-graders for lunch, according to the complaint, which also lists the lead kitchen worker and Fowler Middle School Principal Cindy Pellicci as defendants.
After eating a pretzel laced with the caustic chemical cleaner — which contains highly corrosive sodium hydroxide — a student, identified as L.L., immediately felt burning in his mouth and throat, the outlet reported.
L.L. was kept in a room for roughly an hour without his parents being told about the potential poisoning and was sent back to class after staff claimed he was asymptomatic, the lawsuit alleged.
But his mother said her son came home with a sore throat and stomach pain from ingesting the oven-cleaner-laced snack. He has also suffered lingering anxiety about eating food at school, she said.
The screwed-up snack was discovered when substitute kitchen worker Chloe Larson tasted the seasoning, felt a burn, discovered the discarded packet was used as seasoning and then pushed the lead kitchen worker to reveal it was labeled oven cleaner, the filing said.
Staff allegedly contacted Poison Control about 27 minutes after realizing what happened, and the school emailed parents about the incident two hours later, the complaint added.
The school district determined the pretzels were seasoned with oven cleaner because of “human error,” while police closed their investigation into the incident when they couldn’t establish probable cause, the outlet reported.
The kitchen lead worker reportedly first described the seasoning material to administrators as “soap” and gave explanations as to how the toxic mix-up occurred, including that she was in a rush and had previously crushed the cleaner to use on a steamer but left it out.
The lawsuit claims that the school district failed to properly store caustic chemicals away from food, failed to train staff and allowed the crushed cleaner to be left on a prep counter, the outlet said.
The Tigard-Tualatin School District told the outlet it cannot comment on pending litigation but said the kitchen lead worker is still employed in the school district.
The school district did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
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