Wow. I am disturbed by the overall lack of intelligence these comments demonstrate. There's a few in there worth reading, but after my browse through, it seems there are a lot of people capable of starting a thought and yet clearly lack the ability to carry one through.

I find it highly unlikely that a toxin or virus will only affect certain girls in a certain school in a certain area. The Gardasil theory isn't likely because most of the girls haven't had it yet. It's good old-fashioned mass hysteria, people. The mind is very powerful, and it can fool itself and cause real symptoms. It's easy to jump on the bandwagon and claim that chemical XYZ caused this, but there is not always a physical cause for everything. An individual does not have to be mentally ill or incredibly stressed to develop mass hysteria. It can strike anyone (but it seems to be more common in females). Fortunately, it always resolves itself with time. You'll see. :)

If real I don't get the fracking connection and I have some doubts after watching some of the videos of the girls, one looked frighteningly real and the other girl looked like a fraud, subconscious or otherwise. The biological differences between adults, teens and men, women are not as great as the similarity of teen girls . Too strange that only teen girls are affected unless it was a pregnency.

Vincent; It may not be a cloud burst here or there, but it has been a rather wet season here in the Kentucky. Maybe no record breaking, every day cloud burst just a constant wet.
Anddddd Maybe it has happened before, except school was out, or it happened on a weekend. This seems to happen in Sept on a schoolday - perhaps?

To: Iannelli - there are a multitude of factors playing into how quickly things seep into the groundwater: type of soil, type of groundcover, amount of surrounding pervious surface vs impervious surface. It's possible that construction in the area changing pervious surface to impervious surface has changed the direction/rate of flow and seepage since the original spill. Comparing area construction dates to flooding dates with well monitoring results might be helpful, and could show geographical pattern shifts in well contamination. Additionally, depending on how recent the fracking wells were installed, fracking would open up fissures in the underlying structure, and horizontal fracking can go up to 4000 feet off the vertical, so one can imagine how that could theoretically increase toxic flow into the area from the original site. Add a flood into the mix: would that raise the water table, but this time combining the train wreck toxins with fracking material up to well water levels?

The environmental implications are complex and real.

Also, I keep hearing not all the girls had the Gardasil shot. Which of them had the meningitis or meningitis/flu combination, which also brings it's own set of adverse actions.

@ Ottoschnaut:
Your disbelieving eyes missed one little detail: They want to compare vaccinated with "unvaccinated OR vaccinated-according-to-an-alternate-schedule."

In other words, it's just one more smoke-and-mirrors game. They'll compare kids who received 60 vaccines with "unvaccinated" kids who only received 50, and claim that there is no difference.

Or maybe they'll even claim that getting 10 more vaccines reduces the risk of autism.

I wouldn't trust them as far as I can throw the bathtub.

If I have to listen to one more shrink or doctor condescendingly say, " they're not faking it" yet still basically say it's psychologically caused, I think I will scream.

Jean - I live in LeRoy and found this feed by doing a simple search - and I have posted on my Facebook. Of course not everyone will see it. But I'm doing my part to pass it around.

"The Rochester area set a record for rainfall Sunday, with about 1.75 inches in a 24-hour period. It was the most the city has ever gotten on August 14th. "

That was only a record for that one day in history - August 14th. There are plenty of other days in history in which the area got more rain in a 24 hour period. For example, there is one day in 1974 in which they got 3.85 inches and another day in 1987 when they got 3.25 inches. And in 2005, which I think is well after the school was built, they had 3.08 inches in one day.

If it was the rain stirring things up, why didn't it happen before?

Good point Natassa. My friend with MS had the Zamboni procedure done and was perfect for a couple of months. Unfortunately she re-stenosed (assessed by a special ultrasound technique) but will try it again. It is very challenging for them to keep these tiny veins open. She feels positive via testing that her real condition is the CCSVI and not MS. Just goes to show you how things evolve. The neuros are fighting these developments tooth and nail as well. Her near at the Toronto MS clinic has been appallingly rude and nasty to her.

Maybe there is an attempt (finally) to learn from past mistakes.

Correct my disbelieving eyes, but is this not the IOM soliciting ideas for a vax v unvax health outcomes study?

http://www.iom.edu/Activities/PublicHealth/ChildhoodImmunization.aspx

Matto, may I remind that Multiple Sclerosis was once said by 'experts' to be hysteria. Parkinson's was also explained away as conversion/all-in-the-mind. History is littered with cases of hysteria that later turn out to be something entirely different.

The earth was flat until we found out it wasn't. Psychiatry is the religion of our times, 'explaining' away the unexplainable. Perfectly Normal Beasts running along the plains.

Hi Matto,

My perspective on the mass hysteria/conversion disorder diagnosis is that it could be a rationale used by health and environmental agencies to avoid proper investigation of an actual disease process happening to these girls.

If there's no real disease - are CDC and NYS Department of Health fully engaged? If there's no real disease - is the NYS DEC monitoring the 55 monitoring wells they installed with urgency? What if they didn't dilute the well water which tested positive for TCE - what would the DCA levels be?

I hope this testing is currently being done by NYS DOH/DEC and the CDC, and that they will be transparent with the results.

A PhD or two offering an opinion of MASS HYSTERIA! should not stop important environmental testing by state and federal agencies.

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HAC/pha/pha.asp?docid=226&pg=1

D. Environmental Contamination and Exposure Pathways

As part of a 1993 remedial investigation, NYS DEC's consultant Dunn Engineering Company installed 55 monitoring wells at 17 locations. Up to four wells were installed at each location to monitor groundwater at different depths. In the area adjacent to the spill site, trichloroethene was detected at a maximum concentration of 58,000 mcg/L. The average level of trichloroethene in the spill area ranged from 1,000 to 10,000 mcg/L depending on the depth of the well. Due to the high levels of trichloroethene, these samples had to be diluted for analysis. Cis-1,2-dichloroethene, a breakdown product of trichloroethene, was not detected in most samples, possibly due to the dilution. Outside of the spill area, the maximum level of trichloroethene detected was 2,100 mcg/L; most samples contained trichloroethene below 100 mcg/L.

The NYS DOH has collected water samples at 127 private wells in the area. Trichloroethene has been detected in 49 private wells at concentrations from 0.5 to 7,200 mcg/L. Most of the contaminated wells contain trichloroethene at levels between 5 and 100 mcg/L. Cis-1,2-dichloroethene has also been detected in a few private wells adjacent to the site at concentrations from 0.5 to 38 mcg/L. Although carbon treatment systems were provided to some of the residents with contaminated wells by the railroad company immediately after the spill, there was no follow-up testing and maintenance of the systems. Residents with contaminated water supplies may have been exposed to site-related contaminants via ingestion, inhalation, and dermal contact for up to about 20 years.

Matto;
People when stuck together in a community, or a school can get some pretty strange ideas -- as the girls of one highschool all decided to get pregnant in one year and have their babies together.
But ideas of that kind is a whole different ball game to illness.
But neurological illness is hardly hysteria.
Cancer is that a hysteria.
Please educate me on well documented but poorly understood cases of hysteria???

Thank you for an interesting article. I'm glad that this site and other news outlets are pushing for environmental testing in Leory, NY. Environmental testing should be done.

I wanted to get some clarification on the author's position that mass hysteria is an unreasonable explanation for the recent events in Leroy. It should be noted that mass hysteria and hysteria in general are legitimate, well documented, but poorly understood phenomena. Hysteria can spread like an epidemic, present real physical symptoms, and (perhaps relevant) has been documented to occur primarily in women. The public is largely uneducated in hysteria and usually interprets it as some kind of a deception by those diagnosed - that they are inventing or imagining their symptoms. The Leroy school administrator said something like (I paraphrase) "it's not mass hysteria - these girls aren't faking it," which just establishes a complete misunderstanding of what hysteria is or how it works.

I am all for a scientific, transparent, and impartial investigation into what's going on in Leroy. I understand the town may have a lot to hide if its water and land are tainted, but it's in everyone's best interest to know about it. However, until those investigations are done and environmental factors are established it's just one of many speculative causes, which at this moment still include mass hysteria.

It's also worth mentioning that among communities on the Internet and in general there is such a pervasive "culture of blame" that the idea of an affliction without cause (idiopathy) is seen as ridiculous. For that reason, idiopathic diagnoses are never easy to give or to receive, but it doesn't make them any less real.

This is what I know being a parent of child injured by vaccines and reading this article. Cement and rain is to blame; not the toxic spill.

This is a very important statement! and likely accounts for the "genetic" weaknesses that lead to many diseases, especially of the autoimmune type.
"The fact that only a small proportion (of those exposed) showed symptoms would mean that there must be great variation in susceptibility. Such variations are well known in toxicology.”
However, should healthy young women have been the most susceptible of any group? I always think..small in size, then routes of exposures...absorption..eyes..skin..ingestion..
The chemicals certainly seem important, I just question "why" this group, or again is it synergy that will never find an explanation. Did these girls do anything else, birth control, diet drugs, laughing gas ( legally with dental work), receive boosters of vaccines before the start of this school year...etc..and on..remember wasn't it a similar "group" that suffered toxic shock syndrome..tampons and staph?

I hope the investigators don't have tunnel vision on what chemicals they are testing for. They must also test for pesticides like Round-up (glyphosate) and Armezon (very toxic and widely used in agri-business). Girls should have their urine tested for chemicals too.