At least 94 people who attended the same school in New Jersey, United States, developed a rare brain tumor.
Environmental scientist Al Lupiano is among the Colonia High School graduates and staff who were diagnosed with the tumor. He was diagnosed in the late 1990s when he was 27, but what caught his attention was that his wife and sister also former students at the school also developed brain tumors last year.
Photo credits: Reproduction/Google Maps Façade of a school building
Lupiano’s sister died in February at the age of 44. He began to wonder why he, his wife and sister had these rare tumors, so he started a Facebook group to see if other graduates from the school had contracted tumors or similar diseases.
“I started researching and three became five, five became seven, seven became 15,” Lupiano said. In all, he collected the names of 94 alumni and staff who developed brain tumors, according to the New York Post.
The suspicion is that the cases of tumors are related to environmental problems such as ionizing radiation. “It’s not contaminated water. It’s not air. There’s nothing on the floor,” Lupiano said.
State environmental agencies research possible causes to guide all actions that help evaluate the conduct of environmental impact studies.
extremely rare tumor
The type of tumor diagnosed in schoolgoers is glioblastoma. According to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, glioblastoma occurs in just 3.21 per 100,000 people.
Image: Goglik83/istockGlioblastoma is a rare tumor
Glioblastoma is a primary malignant tumor of the central nervous system. It can occur in the brain or spinal cord and is highly invasive. It forms from cells called astrocytes, which support and nourish nerve cells (neurons) in the brain.