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Yeah, you remember Erin Brockovic, right? Who can forget someone who gets Julia Roberts to play their likeness in a blockbuster?
Well, the leading environmental activist who stirred it up back in the day is now investigating a strange outbreak of Tourettes syndrome in a New York State high school.
Doctors were baffled when 15 kids at the same school started showing symptoms, like twitching, stuttering, and facial tics. Coincidence? Not according to 51-year-old Brockovic who believes the kids have been poisoned by a chemical spill in the LeRoy High School's sports ground.
Skeptics simply dismiss the phenomenon as mass hysteria — a weird, stress-related phenomenon known to have afflicted groups of young girls throughout history.
"I started twitching constantly. Sometimes it gets me to the point I want to cry from twitching so much," says 17-year-old cheerleader Chelsey Dumars. "By 4pm I'm exhausted because my body is worn out from moving so much. I don't like even going into stores any more because I feel like people are staring at me."
Some of the students claim the 14 girls and one boy are faking it, though it seems strange why anyone would want to fake such symptoms.
Brockovic, who won a £210million lawsuit after exposing a cover-up of contaminated drinking water in Hinkley, California, in 1993, stands behind the girls.
"There are reports from parents that at the athletic field where all the children have been there is an orange-yellow substance oozing up from the ground," says Brockovic.
Not surprisingly, school officials have tried to prevent Brockovic's attempts to collect soil samples, claiming the Department of Health already conducted "extensive reviews and found no evidence of environmental issues or infection as the cause of the students' illness."
Smells like female hysteria? Back in 1990 the same was said for a nausea outbreak at a London elementary school. It was later blamed on pesticides used on cucumbers.
Don't know about you, yummies, but the word hysteria is sure making me feel ill.