Almost 100 ex-pupils and staff of one school have been diagnosed with rare brain tumours as one survivor vows to solve the mystery.
Al Lupiano, 50, is among the 94 former staff and students from Colonia High School in New Jersey who was diagnosed with a tumour.
He told NJ.com and the Star Ledger : "I will not rest until I have answers. I will uncover the truth."
Among those who were diagnosed with brain cancer, his younger sister died from the disease in February aged 44.
Al is now determined to find out what caused so many people to develop “extremely” rare malignant brain tumours.
Local officials have recently approved an emergency investigation.
Woodbridge Mayor John McCormac said in a statement: "There could be a real problem here, and our residents deserve to know if there are any dangers.
“We’re all concerned, and we all want to get to the bottom of this. This is definitely not normal.”
Various radiological assessments will be carried out across the school's 28-acre campus this weekend, including testing indoor air samples.
Al was diagnosed with a brain tumour back in the late 1990s when he was 27. He went on to recover.
Last year, his wife - who also attended the school - was diagnosed with a rare brain tumour.
And on the same day, Al's younger sister found out she had brain cancer.
Al started a Facebook group asking locals if they knew about anyone with similar diagnoses.
Before he knew it, Al says he had the names of 94 people connected with the school who developed brain tumours.
The Star Ledger reports that the vast majority of people who have developed brain tumours had "graduated between 1975 and 2000, although outliers have come as recently as a 2014 graduate".
The diagnoses include “several types of primary brain tumors, including cancerous forms like glioblastoma and noncancerous yet debilitating masses such as acoustic neuromas, haemangioblastomas and meningiomas.”
Dr. Sumul Raval, one of New Jersey’s top neuro-oncologists, told local news: "To find something like this … is a significant discovery.
“Normally speaking, you don’t get radiation in a high school . . . unless something is going on in that area that we don’t know."
A viral TikTok video by Dr Joe Whittington discussing the diagnoses amassed more than a million views.
He claimed several former students and staff have been diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme — which is an aggressive cancer that spreads to brain tissue.
It is not clear on how many of the 94 have been diagnosed with it, but it is extremely rare.
Al also spoke with CBS News and says he now believes ionizing radiation must be responsible for the health issues.
He said: "What I find alarming is there’s truly only one environmental link to primary brain tumours, and that’s ionizing radiation.
“It’s not contaminated water. It’s not air. It’s not something in the soil. It’s not something done to us due to bad habits.”
The school was built in 1967 on empty land.
The mayor has contacted the state Department of Health, Department of Environmental Protection and the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry for help.
Al says the school is less than 12 miles from the Middlesex Sampling Plan, which was used to crush, dry, store, package and ship uranium ore during the development of the atomic bomb.
He speculated some of the contaminated soil was removed from the site when it shut in 1967 and could have ended up on the school grounds.
