We already have a pretty strong established link between car exhaust during pregnancy and autism. It’s a serious risk factor:
For the new study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, researchers in California analyzed some 500 children living in that state: roughly half had autism and half did not. The kids’ mothers gave an address for each and every home in which they had lived during pregnancy and the child’s first year of life. Researchers took that information — along with data on traffic volume, vehicle emissions, wind patterns, and regional estimates of pollutants like particulate matter, nitrogen oxide, and ozone — to estimate each child’s likely pollution exposure. According to the study, children in the top 25% of pollution exposure (using one of two different pollution scales) were far more likely to be diagnosed with autism than kids in the bottom 25% of the pollution scale.
The researchers stress, however, that their study does not definitively prove that pollution is the root cause of autism.
“We’re not saying that air pollution causes autism. We’re saying it may be a risk factor for autism,” says Heather Volk, lead author on the new study and an assistant professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California. “Autism is a complex disorder and it’s likely there are many factors contributing,” she says.
In particular, she says, genetic differences may leave some children more susceptible than others to the effects of damaging environmental stimuli such as air pollutants. Still, changes in air pollution over time cannot completely explain the entire disturbing rise in autism prevalence over the past two to three decades. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 1 in 88 U.S. children has now been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. And the pollutants that Volk and colleagues analyze are not necessarily more common today than they were 30 years ago.
Even so, the latest study findings suggest that air pollution may be one of the best characterized environmental risk factors for autism. In an earlier study published in 2010, Volk and colleagues showed that kids with autism were much more likely than kids without the disorder to have been born to mothers living within 1,000 feet of a freeway. Other researchers have shown that kids with autism are also unusually likely to have exposure to high levels of diesel exhaust particles and metals (mercury, cadmium, and nickel) and to other air-pollutant chemicals, such as those used to make rubber, plastics, and dyes.
Thanks to Montgomery County Injury Lawyers, Price Benowitz LLP.
The number and kinds of illnesses related to auto and truck exhaust fumes is endless.
Why some smart lawyer hasn’t already filed a class action suit against the oil companies is a mystery.
correlation is not causation. this study as flawed as are many like it. retrospective population-based studies are controversial. for every population that you select-like this one-another population can be identified for which the opposite is true.
Well susan, perhaps what you say is true and that may be the reason that some smart lawyer hasn’t already filed a class action suit?
But let’s examine your premise.
What you’re saying is that nothing can be proven by looking backwards, and that even if it could be proven to be true, it’s meaningless because another study would find exactly the opposite results.
That’s what you’re telling us correct?