While
pregnant with her son Edgar, Melissa Wolfe followed the lead of many a cautious
woman before her. She took prenatal vitamins and ate organic vegetables. She
avoided dyeing her hair and using hairspray. She even went as far as to leave
the kitchen whenever someone turned on the microwave.
"I was
very vigilant. Perhaps a little crazy," said Wolfe, of Brentwood, N.H.
Yet Wolfe
still fears that her 4-year-old's autism may have resulted from chemicals
infiltrating her womb, whether components of her migraine medicine, contaminants
brought home from her husband's work installing rubber flooring, or remnants of
the remodeling the couple did on their house.
 |
| Melissa Wolfe with her son, Edgar. |
The
remodeling "created even more chemicals that I was breathing while
pregnant," she said. Wolfe also wonders if her father's exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, which the government has now blamed for his
prostate cancer, might be somehow connected to her son's disability.
To date,
science has not directly linked any of these environmental exposures with any
of the disabling behavioral and cognitive conditions that fall along the autism
spectrum. But rising rates of autism along with the increasing breadth and
reach of synthetic chemicals -- some of which are known to be toxic and most of
which we know near nothing about -- raises questions for which scientists are
beginning to offer a few answers.
As the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported in April, autism now
affects an estimated one in 88 kids. Among boys, the burden is even higher:
about one in 54. And the ramifications of the rise go beyond the child, the
family and even the school. In decades to come, individuals with autism are now
expected will account for one in 88 adults, meaning society will pay the price
in terms of lifetime care and other medical expenses. All told, managing autism
already costs the country $35 billion a year.
Researchers
sense the urgency. Many are now investigating factors that might help curb the
epidemic. This generally means looking beyond genetics, the avenue of
investigation that has consumed most of the government's funds and researchers'
time over the last several years.
"While
studying genes might help us identify diagnostic tests, which can make you a
profit, it will not lead us towards preventing disease," said Bruce
Lanphear, an environmental health researcher at Simon Frasier University in
British Columbia. He pointed to lung cancer as a case in point: All the genetic
links in the world amount to little compared to the role of smoking cigarettes,
and therefore encouraging people to abstain is medicine's single most effective
response.
It's also
increasingly clear that genetics can't tell the whole story of autism. A
Stanford University study of twins published last year found that genetics accounts for just 38 percent of the risk.
"That
analysis suggested that the assumption that this is mostly a genetic condition
was perhaps made in error," said Diana Schendel, a scientist with the
CDC's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities.
"Maybe the environment plays a larger role in autism than we once
believed."
Schendel,
who is involved in a large study looking at possible risk factors during a
child's early development, doesn't expect to find one smoking gun. Like other
experts in the field, she thinks a cocktail of chemical insults on top of
genetic susceptibility is likely to blame for each case of autism.
Drugs used
decades ago to treat morning sickness, bipolar disorder and ulcers, as well as
the insecticide chlorpyrifos, have already been tied to autism. With about
80,000 chemicals available for industry use, most of which remain untested for
toxicities, researchers have plenty more potential culprits to investigate. A
study spearheaded by the advocacy organization Environmental Working Group
found an average of 200 industrial chemicals in the umbilical cord blood of 10
babies born in U.S. hospitals in 2004.
Such
figures have raised alarms given the host of health problems on the rise among
kids, including diabetes, obesity, asthma and cancer. Growing children are
extremely sensitive to chemicals, even at very low doses. And of all the
developing organs, the brain may be the most vulnerable. The time window for a
chemical to wreak havoc extends from the early embryo all the way through
adolescence, when the brain finally matures.
"The
brain goes through rapid changes, all complex and all easily disrupted,"
said Dr. Philip Landrigan, chairman of the department of preventative medicine
at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. "Take a Swiss
watch and multiply that by 1,000."
In April,
Landrigan co-authored a report that highlighted 10 widely used chemicals and
mixtures of chemicals that are suspected of harming the developing brain,
including lead, methylmercury, organochlorine pesticides, endocrine disruptors
such as bisphenol-A and phthalates, automobile exhaust, and flame retardants.
Recent
research by Irva Hertz-Picciotto, an autism expert at the University of
California, Davis, supports the list. She has found hints of links between
autism and proximity to freeways, pesticides and a parent's occupational exposures, as well as nutrition.
The latter
study was the first to illustrate how genes and the environment might interact
to trigger the disease. "Children who inherited unlucky genes that made
them less efficient at utilizing and metabolizing the folic acid of prenatal
vitamins had a five- to seven-fold higher risk of autism," Hertz-Picciotto
said.
Next up for
her team: agricultural chemicals and possibly bisphenol-A.
Other
research published over the past few months has added evidence that flame retardants and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), as well as some factors more
broadly considered environmental such as a mother's diabetes or fevers during
pregnancy, might be implicated in autism and other learning disorders. Several
more ongoing studies are looking into social factors, medications taken during
pregnancy, and infections.
"We
are so many years away from having the answers, but we are far closer to a
tsunami of young autistic men in our communities, getting assaulted, assaulting
others," said Donna Ross-Jones of Los Angeles, who blogs about life as the
mother of a 14-year-old boy with autism. "When we look at the impact on
housing and employment, on society, it's pretty scary. This is not like a small
group we can put in a closet."
 |
| Nicky and Donna Ross-Jones. |
Generalizing
about the members of this afflicted group is difficult. Ask 100 different
parents of children with autism, and you'll likely get 100 different
descriptions of the condition, its challenges and its causes.
Edgar
Wolfe, for example, may have a lot of autistic behavior patterns, such as
slapping his hands and talking to himself, but his mom noted that he has no
problem making eye contact and talking with other people. Nicholas
"Nicky" Ross-Jones, on the other hand, "can't carry on a typical
conversation with you," said his mom, "yet he can break into your
computer and break past your firewall."
Donna
Ross-Jones still wonders if the mercury tooth filling she received early in her
pregnancy could have put her child at increased risk. "I'm certain it was
environmental," she said. "But what all those factors were, I don't
know. I do believe they are the realities of a poisoned planet, perhaps not
necessarily just one chemical but an onslaught."
That same
line of reasoning is why autism experts like Mount Sinai's Landrigan aren't
waiting until they find answers in their labs before pushing for regulatory
reform.
As The
Huffington Post reported earlier this week, children's health experts and advocates
are urging Congress to retire the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act and replace
it with the more rigorous and precautionary Safe Chemicals Act, which currently
awaits a Senate vote.
"We
need to reform the [Toxic Substances Control Act]," said Landrigan.
"The present legislation is obsolete and is not working. It's just
creating a situation which is dangerous for America's children."
On Tuesday,
Melissa Wolfe was among 200 moms in Washington, D.C., pressing senators to push
back against industry opposition and pass the Safe Chemicals Act. Like many
other parents, Wolfe finds it difficult to keep toxic chemicals away from
herself and her family. She knows that products often contain unlisted
ingredients, such as the chemical make-up of the fragrance in a
"fresh-baked apple pie candle," she said.
"I
just want to wrap my kids in bubble wrap," added Wolfe. "But then I
say, 'What is in the bubble wrap?'"
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