Fifteen high school students from Le Roy, N.Y. continue to suffer from an illness that’s causing uncontrollable twitching and outbursts.
But on Saturday, members of famed environmental activist Erin Brockovich’s team, including investigator Bob Bowcock, made a visit to Le Roy Junior-Senior High School.
However, shortly after they arrived, Le Roy's Superintendent Kim Cox told the team they weren’t allowed to take any samples on school grounds. HLN’s Dr. Drew spoke to Bowcock shortly after the incident.
“Bob went to the school and was stonewalled,” he said. “He has worked with Brockovich for years and this has never happened to them. The school superintendent gave them a note with a statement saying that the school has hired its own [environmental company/services] to review the environmental testing that had been previously done. They would not allow him to do the testing.”
Read full Le Roy Central School District statement to media here
Bowcock and his team then went to where a train derailed in 1971, which spilled 35,000 gallons of the industrial solvent trichloroethene (TCE). The goal was to see if chemicals were still in the groundwater that could be possibly leading to the school.
WROC’s Caroline Tucker reported on CNN Saturday, “there was an EPA report that came out just kind of saying what solvents went into the ground. They do know a lot of that was absorbed into the ground. A lot of it though is wells near where the site was were turned off. However, Bowcock said that a lot of those wells end up getting turned off, but the ground water moves into the other parts of the ground. It has to go somewhere. And that's why there is concern whether other wells may be affected and whether it could be flowing the way the water flows and drains down into where the school ground is.”
Dr. Drew added, “When Bowcock arrived at the site of the original spill, he had never seen, in all of his career, anything like it … it is like the site itself is becoming a source of further contamination ... this is really serious stuff.”
Dr. Drew also noted that Bowcock is trying to look at areas of the community where middle and high school students may congregate.
“There is a limestone quarry in a direct line of this contaminated material that has been leaching it - that these kids may be swimming in," Dr. Drew said. "That’s his biggest lead right now. He’s going to check that out.”
On Monday, Dr. Drew will show the confrontation at the school and footage from the spill site.
“The spill site still has hundreds and hundreds of decaying drums filled with toxic material within feet of people's living environment," Dr. Drew explained.
If you missed Dr. Drew’s interview with Erin Brockovich, you can catch the replay on HLN Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT. For further updates, be sure to follow the show on Twitter @DrDrewHLN.
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What are the officials of this school afraid of? Are they trying to hide something? If so, that is a rotten thing to do to these poor affected people and families. Didn't they read Erin's book? Or see the movie? Erin Brockovich knows what she's doing. She's the best in that particular field. This school needs to wise up! What if it were their families that were affected? You can bet that they'd want the best. And Erin's team is the best!
Yes, why on earth would they refuse help to find out the cause of these awful symptoms these children are experiencing? I hope the parents and students are also standing up to this. Thank God for Erin Brockovich!! Hopefully she will come to where we live in Erie, Colorado where they use chemicals very similar to TCE to hydraulically fracture for natural gas in our backyards and right next to our schools.
Maybe y'all need to contact her, if there's a really big problem in your area.
I've been following this story from day one. As a lay person there are two questions I would have; a) why is this nerological condition only affecting a few girls? and, b) is there a common denominator with the ladies?
I'm praying for these lovely young ladies and their families. I'm a mother and can't imagine the stress the parents are under seeing their girls slowly deteriorate.
I believe there are 14 girls and 1 boy at this time experiencing similar symptoms. They will get to the bottom of it. Thank you Erin Brockovitch!
Don't believe this for a minute. These girls are faking it.
I bet they wish they were faking it. I bet they have better things to do than pretend to be sick. If this is acting, they should get an Academy Award.
I bet everything's fake, in your book, until you've had personal experience of it.
I am not sure about the faking this but it does strike me that only females have this so called mysterious condition. Why only females?
Exactly,why only the girls have t? It is all a HOAX. They are ALL just faking this ENTIRE THING. It makes me sick.
I heard that it was 14 females and 1 male that are in this terrible ordeal.
I have seen these kids if there faking it they are the best actors on the panet. Buy the way how do you fake it in your sleep. You better hope none of these kids parents read a non beleavers post, they are allready really mad .
Thibkwgarbyou want..Ithniknthey are faking it. So let ave me alone. I sleep just fine.
What do these girls have in common? Have they all been immunized for cervical cancer or something else lately? Maybe a problem w/the vaccine. Do they eat & drink sugar free foods? Aspartame is a "killer" ingredient in our food & drugs today. People react differently to aspartame poisining. Please Dr. Drew, blow the whistle on aspartame & the devastating effects it's having on our society. I got extremely depressed & suicidal from it. Teen suicides from excessive use of diet food???
If it does not turn out to be checmicals in the water.There are two things they may want to look at it seems the girls we have seen on TV so far all have done hair color changes.Did they all use a simalar product for hair coloring?Has anyone looked at their clothing.I worked in the garment industry you be surprised what clothing is processed with and being much of it comes from China we have no idea what else could be used and the chemicals take many washings to get out of the clothing .
Also the area of Le Roy has many farms.If the water table is contaminated are the crops being grown and sold putting the public in danger ?
You need to get Prof Dr Garth Nicolson (www.immed.org- Nobel nominee Cellular patologist and discoverer of Gulf War Illness) to investigate if this is a Mycoplasma infection, such as Mycoplasma Fermentans-Incognitus. The goverment has done this type of "testing" before, it wouldn't surprise me if they were at it again...to say this is a hysteria syndrome is pathetic.....
Thank you Dr. Drew and Erin Brockovich. This whole area is in trouble. I pray you find out what this is before it gets worst
Seems like the Brockovich crew knew full well that going to the school on a Saturday with news crews following them would shed a bad light on the school- all for ratings and scare tactics! Sadly, the girls are the ones who are hurt as well as the entire Le Roy community! How sad they had to go this route of harassment and trespassing. Contact the school and have a civil conference, then suggest (together) ways of additional testing. Have professional samples taken by an unbiased scientific company, then split those samples so the Borokovich crew can do testing, the school, the NYS Health dept , the company taking the samples, and a control. These tests would end the bickering, and have a true outcome in a civil way!
thank you.. Thank you ... Thank you... I agree with you totally... The Brokavich team didnt go about it right at all... to force yourself onto a place is the absolutely wrong way to go.. and from what i understand they did and still are.. These kids dont need anymore stress... and the TV crews are adding to the stress levels of everyone there.. it just sickens me that this world is this way..
THANK GOD FOR THE NEWS: hope this helps a lot of people.
Obviously, the "powers that be" in LeRoy have been keeping a lid on a huge environmental toxin spill. Seems like those "officials" have a lot at stake to keep their secret. That's the ugly part. The spill should have been cleaned up before 20 years while it was spreading the groundwater. Handy that they continued using the quarry adjacent to the non-cleaned-up-train-wreck-toxic-spill. That probably was what made the school, cement, cinderblocks. Nice of the leaders to allow kids to swim in the water filled quarry. Guess the big problem is the news came in to do some tests, 40 years after the spill. Everything was completely under control before the news came in. I'm beginning to think the only way we can trust government is to have the news in.
Wow, I would think the State of NY would jump on this and run some test and do so quickly. This could mean a huge law suit for the school district if they ignor a possible danger to their students and they do not act on it. Also if this was not cleaned up at the time of the spill wouldn't the responsable party still be responsable. Hey NY clean it up and bill someone later...Duh. I have two kids with tourettes. It can be environmental or hereditary. Grandpa had it. My advice to these families.....move. It could mean your child's future as a functioning adult.
Interestingly, the drinking water for Le Roy comes from the Monroe County Water Authority, which tests for, but hasn't found any trichloroethene, the industrial solvent that contaminated groundwater in the area near the train accident.
0 students at a small high school in North Carolina were diagnosed with mass hysteria (another name for conversion disorder) at the start of the 2002 school year.
Twelve students, 11 girls and 1 boy, were originally evaluated after developing episodes that resembled seizures – which they were having for four months. It was determined that the boy was indeed having seizures and one of the girls was suffering from postural hypotension, which can lead to fainting. The other 10 girls were diagnosed with mass motor hysteria, which went away after the students were separated over Christmas break
What gets me is no one knows about spill prior to Erin Brockovich’s arrival? And then it was mentioned that the crash site is still littered with rusty drums? Why? Did these drums contain chemicals? What else happen in the community since after the spill that is out of the norm? What about the animals to include birds?
Gee! Is this another example of what could happen if we build the keystone pipeline over the wetlands and key aquifer. Hey what a few lives huh, as long as it's not yours!
Now answer me this, what species was responsible for all that happened just in this community from the spill until now? There is no need of the Devil or Mother Earth destroying mankind we are doing a fine job on our own.
The book "Hazardous and Industrial Waste Proceedings,"by Nik Nikolaidis contains very interesting and revealing information about this spill and a study conducted on the site "TCE Vapor Extraction on Fractured Limestone". page 209
http://books.google.com/books?id=GIAw6-V1LawC&lpg=PA209&dq=le%20roy%20ny%20spill&pg=PA209#v=onepage&q=le%20roy%20&f=false
I think they are all faking it.those girls are just faking those ticks. IT is so obvious. Why can't everyone see they are just faking this entire thing? It is so obvious. My God world, wake up and see the truth
Quick question.....has anyone looked into whether any of these young women had received a HPV – Guardasil – immunizations? Sometimes I think that there is NOT enough study on the serums before they are used.
The thing that puzzles me is when one of the girls was experiencing a seizure, a brain scan showed that no activity conducive to a seizure was taking place. Which means that even though she was displaying symptoms of a seizure she wasn't really having a seizure. Also when you watch some of the girls, they are not twitching. Just waiving their arms around, it's very very weird. Not like Tourettes at all, where it's obvious twitching. The whole thing is very strange.
Their so-called "twiching" seems very deliberate in my opinion. Not spontaneous. I wouldn't be surprised if they were faking to get out of school and the whole thing snowballed out of control. There will probably be a TV movie on Lifetime about it eventually.
These fakers will even bruise themselves, try to out do each other because they are FAIING THIS WHOLE THING.WAKE UP PEOPLE.THEY ARE PULLING YOUR LEGS. THEY ARE FAKING THIS.
I'd like to know why neurologists are making psychiatric diagnoses? Don't we have medical specialists for a reason......can you say misdiagnosis? I wouldn't even let Mechler and McVige near my cat after this.
Since the school refused Erin's team to test on their property, maybe Erin's team can stand right outside the school property line to test soil.
That's a good point, Tiffany. If the ground on the school's property is tainted, then the ground outside the school property line should be tainted as well.
A CIVIL ACTION about the ground water in Woburn, MA and all the super fund sites around America need to be cleaned up. There were nerve gas weapons leaking out of the Anniston Al army depot and the military polluted the Fort McClellan in AL and then moved the chemical weapons to Ft. Leonard Wood, MO and Monsanto polluted the area of West Anniston Al. Stauffer chemical is a horrific super fund site in Tarpon Springs, FL and of course they built a school near there as well. We must stop poisioning ourselves and we do not need any GMO's either.
Erin Brokowitch is just looking for some PR... These girls are ALL JUST FAKING IT! MAYBE TO THE EXTENT THAT THEY ACTAULLY BELIEVE THEY HAVE SOME TWITCHING PROBLEM. THIS IS A HOAX BY A BUNCH OF MIDDLE AMERICAN CLASSLESS BORED TEENAGERS. THIS IS SUCH AN OBVIOUS HOAX. HOAX. HOAX. WAKE UP PEOPLE. NO GUYS WOULD EVER FAKE SUCH STUPID BEHAVIOUR. WHY NO GUYS?????? HELLOOOOOO.
If this was you in this instance, or one of your relatives or friends, would you want someone to say that about you? I guarantee not!
With 14 girls and 1 boy, is there any reason to believe that the result could be predominantly gender-specific? Has there been much talk of this?
Also, why has the school rep (Cox) said that PANDAS/PANS has been ruled out? Does she mean the neurologist <Mechtler) did the appropriate tests for PANDAS? I don't believe he even does that. mechtler was very quick to call the girls' problem, "conversion disorder." I would point out that Mechtler has received a lot of pharma "consulting" money according to "Dollars for Docs." you could also tell that Dr. max Wiznitzer was really uncomfortable with a possible PANDAS diagnosis. Interestingly, he is a PAID vaccine court witness who has testified against parents who have claimed their child was injured by vaccines. They are pathetic. Kids don't stand a chance these days. Thank God for Brockevitch and Dr. Trifiletti!
Dr. Drew please pass along something I saw on fit and health channel. There is a condition called PANDAS. It is a neurological problem caused from the strep virus. It causes ticks and bad OCD. I know strep is contagious so maybe there is something to this. Thank you . Billie Jo wright.
Oh Goodness I just found a youtube video of 'Pandas Strep" Disorder and it does cause the same neuroligical problem and twitching as these girls! This may, or may not, be what they have–but they have to look into this.
EVERYONE LOOK AT THIS PANDAS STREP DISORDER VIDEO THAT CAUSES TICS
(cut & paste)
http://youtu.be/8clEvshgtyQ
http://youtu.be/9TX0ypCRT-0
I don't know which is worse, people who are saying that these poor innocent people are faking it.. or saying it's this "Pandas Strep," thing. If it is this so called "Pandas Strep" thing, then how come there is 8 families on 1 street alone that have all different kinds of cancer? And another street with similar issues. And that's just for starters. Next are y'all gonna tell me and the rest of us here that these are two seperate incidences. No Watch the movie! This is a cover-up if I ever saw one. The train company, the school and whoever else. The school lied to Erin Brockovich's team.. saying that they were going to hire their own team of investigators, to do the Vapor extraction, the Soil extraction, and the other test that excapes me at the moment. The school never hired their own team. Which tells me that they are trying to hide something. If it were me, I'd have kept on digging. It seems to me that Dr. Drew and Erin's team care more about these poor people in Le Roy, New York, than the school officials. Keep going Dr. Drew and Erin!
I'm curios about the timing of this malady. How could they all get sick the very same month? If it is something in the water it would be random. Maybe one or two people in one month then a couple more later on. But not all at the same time. Also remember the Salem witch trials? Teenage girls hysterical claiming to be possessed?. Sound familiar?.
Those girls have been contaminated from some chemical, period. They need to interview them and find out what they all Have In Common; find that common denominator and that will lead back to the chemical that affected them.
I also just read from a commenter that Leroy has a high level of Parkinsons–thats a neuroligical disorder as well. Geesh, I dont think I'll be visting Leroy any time soon.
Oh Goodness I just found a youtube video of 'Pandas Strep" Disorder and it does cause the same neuroligical problem and twitching as these girls! This may, or may not, be what they have–but they have to look into this.
EVERYONE LOOK AT THIS PANDAS STREP DISORDER VIDEO THAT CAUSES TICS
(cut & paste)
http://youtu.be/8clEvshgtyQ
http://youtu.be/9TX0ypCRT-0
I also have a concern about the disease control center that was moved from upstate ny to kentucky, during the move, diseases or other bacteria and who else knows what, could have been leaked or escaped during the move. Someone needs to look into that aspect, just like all the fish dying and birds dying in certain areas, could be linked to our own disease control centers.
Dr. Drew, please tell me how these twitching girls can PUT ON THEIR EYE MAKEUP SO WELL IF THEY HAVE TWITCHES LIKE THEY SEEM TO HAVE?????????? THEY ALL HAVE PERFECTLY OUT ON EYELINER,EYE SHADOW and MASCARA ON. IT IS A HOAX!!!
@ Leah Williams
I have a tremor disorder just like these girls and you can hold in the tremors for a few seconds, it hurts, but if you want to try to be normal, like putting on makeup you deal with a little more pain. People like you make this world a horrible place by not accepting something out of the ordinary. You try shaking days upon days without stopping....you try to find every possible way of being normal again. I had to teach myself how to hold my tremors when I was in school carrying my books so they wouldn't fly all over the place, I had to control my vocal tic so I could sing in my 2 choirs...was it easy? No! But it made me a stronger person, but proving to people like you that this isn't fake and you can become a stronger mentally than you could ever be!
Could it be: Sydenham's chorea or chorea minor (historically referred to as Saint Vitus Dance) is a disease characterized by rapid, uncoordinated jerking movements affecting primarily the face, feet and hands. Sydenham's chorea (SC) results from childhood infection with Group A beta-hemolytic Streptococci and is reported to occur in 20-30% of patients with acute rheumatic fever (ARF). The disease is usually latent, occurring up to 6 months after the acute infection, but may occasionally be the presenting symptom of rheumatic fever. Sydenham's Chorea is more common in females than males and most patients are children, below 18 years of age.
This is not a mystery, it's Post Streptococcal Autoimmune Neurobehavior Disorder. It can occurs-anytime even a year or two later- post having an infection, from the TOXINS of various strains of strep, depending upon an individuals immune system. Furthermore, the medical staff and school staff are well aware of this but have chosen to ignore it, preferring instead to sensationalize it in the media.
Tell me, WHO IS PUTTING ON ALL THESE GIRLS PERFECTLY DONE EYE MAKEUP? PERFECT EYELINER, PERFECT MASCARA, PERFECT EYE SHADOW!!!!!! WITH ALL THEIR TWITCHING GOING ON, I FIND THEIR EYEMAKEUP REMARKABLE!!!!! HOAX HOAX HOAX HOAX!!!!!!!
Like I've said before...I would hold in my tremors to put my make up on. It was take 3 times longer to do it, but I did it. Also, I would have other people do it for me. Did you ever think of something like that?! Please Leah, try shaking your arms all day and see how you feel, how it is to try to function. You're such a narrow minded person. I feel bad for you.
Why do you feel like this is a hoax? Do you have proof? Have you seen something like this before?
Amen to that, girl!!