Al Lupiano, an environmental scientist and Colonia high school alumnus, got diagnosed with Glioblastoma (an aggressive form of brain cancer) at the age of 27 back in the 1990s. After successfully fighting cancer, he vowed to find out what caused it when both his wife and his sister (both alumni of the same NJ high school) developed and passed away from the same cancer.
Al Lupiano, 50, believed that it was too big a coincidence that the three of them, who went to the same high school, developed the same kind of cancer.
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So, to investigate the matter further, he created a Facebook group with other alumni of the same high school and found that 94 people who went to the Colonia High School in the Woodbridge Township School District between the years 1975- 2000 (although some had even graduated there as recently as 2014) developed some kind of brain tumor (both cancerous and non-cancerous).
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This caught the attention of scientists and environmental authorities and sparked an investigation to discover what may have caused the issue. The Department of Health, The Department of Environmental Protection, and the Federal Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry have all been working with the local mayor to carry out his investigation, but so far, no definitive cause has been determined.
Doctors still don’t know what causes Glioblastoma (although some research has found it to be linked to genetics, pesticides, petroleum, synthetic rubber, and vinyl chloride), so it is difficult to find out what caused all of these NJ high school alumni to develop the same kind of cancer.
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Al Lupiano, along with several other scientists and environmentalists, believes that environmental factors are to blame, and they are tirelessly working on getting to the root of the matter.
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