For more than a decade, questions about carcinogens have swirled around Bayshore High School in Bradenton. A geologist and an area mother whose son was diagnosed with cancer two years after he graduated from Bayshore are pressing for more definitive answers.

  • Bayshore High School torn down in the 1990's
  • Facebook group full of other alumni who have cancer, auto-immune diseases
  • Manatee County Commission asking for additional research

Kristin Moore's son Josh graduated from Bayshore High School and was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer two years later.
 
"He texted me from inside the doctors office, and it was at 2:10 that afternoon, and it was just 'Mom -- it's cancer,'" Moore said.
 
Josh realized he wasn't alone when he discovered a Facebook group full of other alumni with eerily similar stories. The group was started by 1981 graduate Cheryl Jozsa, who lost her sister to cancer.

Jozsa knows of 166 alumni living with cancer, and 91 who have passed away from the disease. An additional 109 alumni are suffering from autoimmune diseases.

All of them attended the old Bayshore High School that was taken down in the late 1990s.
 
Geologist Dave Woodhouse has been carefully examining the case for years.
 
"Were all of the students eating something, drinking something, or was it possibly water?" he said. "Lo and behold, they had their own wells and at this point in time, we're not certain of how many or how deep the wells were."
 
Woodhouse believes the water is to blame, possibly contaminated from nearby sources classified as a "superfund site."
 
"If you have a well along the way, it is like a straw in the group and sucks up the contaminant," Woodhouse said. "Lo and behold, you have the students drinking arsenic in the water and chlorinated solvents in the water."
 
The school district has released the results of 5 different tests, with one test completed as recently as 2007. All of them state there are no contaminants in the soil or water.

However, the Manatee County Commission is now on board the effort to find answers, and is asking for additional research into the site.
 
The commission plans to take up the issue at a meeting set for April 25.