A consultant will be testing the grounds at Colonia High School, New Jersey, amid concerns that the school is linked to a high rate of rare brain cancers. Earlier this year, 1989 Colonia High School graduate Al Lupiano developed a list of more than 120 people who were students, teachers or staff members at the school from the 1970s to 1990s. His sister had recently died of cancer. Al Lupiano, a Colonia High School graduate is on a mission to answer that question after discovering more than 80 fe. "It was clearly alarming enough that it merited further attention and I just helped him get that attention. The cause hasn't been discovered yet, but some researchers suspect . "With that in mind, and after many weeks of work, I was able to negotiate an agreement with BTF to provide this service completely FREE of charge.". As a Rutgers University graduate with a major in environmental sciences and a minor inindustrial hygiene safety engineering, he's made a career of cleaning up unsafe sites. Today we are very happy to announce that our extensive testing for both radon and radiation in the interior and exterior of the school building produced no evidence of cancer-causing hazards that warrant further investigation, said Woodbridge Mayor John McCormac during the press conference posted on the townships Youtube page. Very few achieve the label, but one of them is Toms River, where the rate of childhood cancers surged in the 1990s after the towns drinking water was contaminated with toxic chemicals from two waste dumps. Suzanne Russell is a breaking news reporter for MyCentralJersey.com covering crime, courts and other mayhem. The program will take real-time measurements of radiation inside and outside the building, the town said. He thinks the cases stem from contaminated soil, but there's no data to prove that at this point. After his sister's death in February, Lupiano became convinced of a link between the Colonia. McCormac speaks highly of Lupiano, who worked for nine years after college with EPA emergency responders. The work will be done in cooperation with Woodbridge School District. He says if there is something going on, he worries about all of the people that would be impacted. Platz expects that public health officials will look for specific overlaps in timing and tumor type. 94 people from Colonia High School in Woodbridge, New Jersey are part of a cancer cluster of still unknown origin. Two weeks from now, if we dont hear anything from the federal agencies, theres going to be a lot of yelling and screaming, and the parents are going to run out of patience, he said. Its not contaminated water. Al Lupiano was diagnosed with a "very rare" and abnormally large brain tumor in 1999 when he was 27 called Acoustic Neuroma. (For example, smoking increases a person's risk of lung cancer.). This is how New Jersey saw the world from 1940-to 1980. The environmental engineering firm T+M Associates was. While the family had hoped to move forward following the operation, tests . Since last August, Lupiano has spent countless hours trying to find other people linked to CHS with primary brain cancers. Its not something done to us due to bad habits.. The Anti-Defamation League said the phrase at the center of the question was popularized as a trolling campaign by members of 4chan a notorious anonymous message board and was adopted by . "If there's a unique exposure, we would expect a unique cancer type," Platz said. Find your municipality in this alphabetical list to see how its average property tax bill for 2021 compares to others. The states Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Shawn LaTourette backed up the mayors declaration the school was safe. Woodbridge Mayor John McCormick told CBS New York the school, which was built in 1967, was built on "virgin land" in the woods. Lupiano is an environmental scientist who tested ground samples for toxins over the course of his career and suggested that the school's grounds could be contaminated, according to NJ Spotlight News. A cancer survivor is vowing to untangle the twisted mystery of why almost 100 people associated with a New Jersey high school have developed extremely rare malignant brain tumors. Researchers need to ask themselves, for example, whether an apparent cluster could reflect the fact that many cancer victims are older, or whether their tumors may have been caused by radiation that was used to cure some other illness, he said. It is his belief my wife and I may be the first documented case of spouses having an AN, both roughly the same size and on the same side of the headaccording to him, the odds are maybe 1 in a BILLION," Lupiano said. The brain tumor cases, appearing over a thirty-year period, are a significant medical mystery that has caused alarm for experts. The analysis took several weeks. 100 PEOPLE WITH RARE TUMORS WHO ATTENDED SAME NEW JERSEY HIGH SCHOOL DEMAND ANSWERS The 110 people that Lupiano has counted on his list of former Colonia High School graduates have been. According to American Association of Neurological Surgeons, glioblastoma is normally extremely rare with an incidence of 3.21 per 100,000 people. Visit our corporate site (opens in new tab). Even though the cluster cases ended almost two decades ago, Lupiano appears as determined as ever to uncover the cause -- and he understands that parents who send their kids to school there now may have some concerns despite what officials tell them. "I hope the results come back with absolutely nothing," he said. "Her four children are potentially being exposed to the same thing that killed their mother. Hours after Deciliis got her diagnosis, Lupiano's wife Michelereceived similar news. 2023 FOX News Network, LLC. "The rates are actually consistent in New Jersey with the United States," McGreevy said. We are looking at possible things that we can do between the town and school, and they said they will look at anything we come up with, McCormac said. I still dont know what Im going to do with my kids, Komorek told NJ.com. But public health experts are cautioning against deeming the tumor cases a "cancer cluster" just yet. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. The health department also looked at brain cancer rates for Colonia High School and compared them to rates of brain cancer throughout New Jersey and the United States. Since the initial post, Lupiano has published a list of 115 people who attended or worked at Colonia and were diagnosed with a primary brain tumor, according to news reports. That decades-long stretch ended in the early 2000s, but recent publicity around the cases prompted an exhaustive new investigation and radiological testing at the Woodbridge Township School District building. Lupiano is wondering whether some of that soil ended up on the school grounds. (Google Maps). That decades-long stretch ended in the early 2000s, but recent. The school was built back in 1967 on acres of empty land, with McCormac telling the news network he is stumped as to what could be causing the cancers. The issue became national headline in the United States after CBS News aired a story on it. "The Departments stand ready to assist Woodbridge in reviewing any environmental data it collects to determine appropriate next steps," the statement reads. 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For people who graduated recently, the chances of having cancer now is much lower than those in their 70s and 80s, he said. The discovery of the possible link between the school and the brain tumors is so new that it hasn't yet been verified by any agency, and the testing being done there is just part of the effort to figure out the true extent of the problem. More than 100 graduates of a New Jersey high school have been diagnosed with brain tumors over the past 30 years, prompting concern that there might be a connection between the school and the tumor cases. Among the others diagnosed with brain cancer was Lupianos younger sister, who passed away from the disease in February at the age of 44. Phillips had surgery to remove the tumor on March 3 and entered physical, occupational and speech therapy soon after. Lupiano eventually arrived at a single linking factor between himself, his wife and his sister: they each attended Colonia High School in Woodbridge in the 1990s. A copy of Lupianos list, with the names and phone numbers of victims redacted, includes some who, like Lupiano himself, graduated decades ago. I will not rest until I have answers, Lupiano, 50, declared in an interview with NJ.com and the Star-Ledger on Thursday. A former Woodbridge man has identified 84 Colonia High School alumni and former staffers with rare brain tumors and wants health officials to investigate. It can seem connected, when in reality, cancer is quite common and people are simply noticing this fact. Until then, he knew of 15 former Colonia attendees who had been diagnosed with brain tumors. "I'm getting reports of whole blocks in and around the neighborhood, that they call themselves 'Cancer Alley,'" Lupiano said. "As previously stated, there is basically one medically proven cause of rare brain tumors like ours radiation," he wrote. There are noeasily available records from the land before CHS was built in 1967, according to McCormac. So far, more than 2,000 people have signed a Change.org petition demanding, in part, students return to remote learning. Jason Wisinski, who lost his wife and sister-in-law, both Colonia High alumnae, to . If we dont find anything, we have to start looking at other potential candidates, whether its chemicals or something in the soil or air. Theres lots and lots of people calling me, saying, Look, I didnt go to the high school, but I live a mile away, and we call our block cancer alley,' said Lupiano. According to NJ Spotlight News, McCormac has been contacted by at least five agencies, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the New Jersey Department of Health. Victim No. According to Fox News, there have been instances of both malignant and benign brain tumors being discovered in former Colonia High School attendees. Lupiano said he has had meetings with county, state and federal agencies, which he said in a March 25 post "are going well.". 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