NC State alumni report more than 150 cancer cases possibly linked to contaminants in campus building

North Carolina State University continues to investigate how many students and alumni have been exposed to alarming levels of polychlorinated biphenyls — a possible carcinogen, according to Fox News Digital. The school shut down a campus building in November 2023 that contained toxic PCBs.

There have been more than 150 cancer cases reported by those who attended classes at Poe Hall. The concerns were raised in November of last year, which prompted the school to shut down the building. The report mentioned that the Environmental Protection Agency detected that PCB levels were 38 times the standards for building materials. The toxic element was discovered in five rooms around the building.

Christie Lewis, an NC State alumnus, told Fox News Digital, "I was finishing up my finals, and I was going in for a physical at the health center. ... I was having night sweats for weeks and weeks before this, and I could not figure out what was happening."

"I was having to get up in the middle of night and change clothes completely. And then I would fall asleep. And I had to put a towel down. It honestly took me weeks to even tell my husband about them because I kept on forgetting about it because it was just in the middle of the night," Lewis added.

Lewis attended NC State from 2007 to 2012. While she started studying business, she eventually ended up in education, where she took classes at Poe Hall. She studied in the building "for about four years," according to the report.

While in college, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Just months after the diagnosis, she discovered a lump in her throat and was diagnosed with angiosarcoma, according to the New York Post.

"And so just as I'm finishing up my finals and my papers, I'm going to see an endocrinologist and they're doing a biopsy of my neck, and that's traumatic," Lewis said. "They don't sedate you or anything. They just kind of shove a huge needle into your throat and jab it around everywhere."

Though Lewis understood that some people just get cancer, she became concerned after discovering that the number of cancer diagnoses by NC State alumni was three times the number of all cancer cases in Wake County.

"I could have never made that connection by myself because I didn't know anybody else. I was the only one in my little cohort of classmates who had cancer when I was in college," she said.

"And I just thought that something was just wrong with my body. That something was wrong with me. I have four siblings, and everybody's so healthy except for me."

It is uncertain if those who have been diagnosed with cancer will take action against the university.

The EPA says the following about PCBs:

PCBs have been demonstrated to cause a variety of adverse health effects. They have been shown to cause cancer in animals as well as a number of serious non-cancer health effects in animals, including: effects on the immune system, reproductive system, nervous system, endocrine system and other health effects.

Studies in humans support evidence for potential carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic effects of PCBs. The different health effects of PCBs may be interrelated. Alterations in one system may have significant implications for the other systems of the body. The potential health effects of PCB exposure are discussed in greater detail below.

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