Brockovich's team kicked out of NY 'twitching teens' school

AN ENVIRONMENTAL investigator sent by Erin Brockovich to investigate a school in upstate New York where 15 children suddenly developed nervous tics received a frosty welcome at the weekend. A spokesman for Le Roy Junior-Senior High School said the investigator, Robert Bowcock, was kicked out of the grounds because he was grandstanding in front of the TV crews he had invited along to watch him collect soil samples.

Bowcock had been called in to collect the samples in an effort to establish whether the cluster of nervous tics in the teens - who show symptoms similar to Tourette's - might be related to a decades-old chemical spillage in the town.

In 1970, a train derailed, spilling a ton of cyanide crystals and around 30,000 gallons of trichloroethene (TCE), which seeped into the soil and groundwater. Rusting barrels of contaminated soil and water still litter the site of the crash.

The so-called 'plume' of TCE-contaminated groundwater that resulted from the crash is thought to be the largest in the US.

School authorities have maintained that tests have shown there was no environmental cause – but Brockovich, made famous when Julia Roberts played her in a 2000 movie, believed there could be a link to the 1970 train crash and sent Bowcock to look into it.

School officials said that if Brockovich's team had been allowed to take samples, they would have had no scientific value because they were collected in an unprofessional manner.

Bowcock, however, did manage to carry out tests elsewhere in Le Roy, including sampling groundwater from wells at four homes near the school and the 1970 crash site. He told USA Today it would be six weeks before he got results that could confirm or rule out that contaminated groundwater had seeped under the school. "If I rule the groundwater out, then I have to wait until the first thaw to rule out the soil and the air," he added.

Brockovich, who famously proved a link between a cancer cluster in a Californian town and contaminated groundwater, was invited to carry out an investigation by local residents who believe that not enough has been done to rule out an environmental cause for the sudden appearance of a cluster of nervous twitching cases at Le Roy school.

As reported here by Charles Laurence, doctors treating the teens have ruled out any straightforward infections or diseases being the cause of their symptoms. Neurologist Dr Lazlo Mechtler doesn't believe there is any mystery. He says the kids - all girls bar one boy - are suffering conversion disorder, a psychological problem which can present physical symptoms like twitches and tics.

But Dr Mechtler tells Buffalo News: "People do not want to accept that. They live a conspiracy life in a bioterrorist world."

Bowcock admits that there is only a slim chance that the nervous twitches are related to environmental factors.

However, he believes that even if he is unable to establish a link, his efforts will not have been in vain: "The good outcome is that the people of Le Roy realise that they have the largest TCE plume in the eastern United States under their community and the government has given them lip service for 40 years telling them 'we've cleaned it, we've cleaned it up.

"Frankly, I'm here to tell you, they haven't done a darn thing." ·