Autism Spectrum Disorders and Identified Toxic Land Fills

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Autism Spectrum Disorders and Identified Toxic Land Fills: Co-Occurrence

Across States

Xue Ming et a

Environmental Health Insights 2008:2 55--59

http://www.la-press.com/redirect_file.php?fileId=1420 & filename=EHI-2-Ming-et-al & \

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http://tinyurl.com/6xgsbz

Abstract: It is believed that gene by environmental interactions

contribute to the pathogenesis of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). We

hypothesize that ASD are associated with early and repeated exposures to

any of a number of toxicants or mixtures of toxicants. It is the

cumulative effects of these repeated exposures acting upon genetically

susceptible individuals that lead to the phenotypes of ASD. We report

our initial observations of a considerable overlap of identifi ed toxic

landfills in the State of New Jersey and the residence of an ASD cohort,

and a correlation between the identifi ed toxic Superfund sites on each

U.S. state and the total number of diagnosed cases of ASD in those

states. The residence of 495 ASD patients in New Jersey by zip code and

the toxic landfi ll sites were plotted on a map of Northern New Jersey.

The area of highest ASD cases coincides with the highest density of

toxic landfi ll sites while the area with lowest ASD cases has the

lowest density of toxic landfi ll sites. Furthermore, the number of

toxic Superfund sites and autism rate across 49 of the 50 states shows a

statistically signifi cant correlation (i.e. the number of identifi ed

superfund sites correlates with the rate of autism per 1000 residents in

49 of the states (p = 0.015; excluding the state of Oregon). These

signifi cant observations call for further organized studies to

elucidate possible role(s) of environmental toxicants contributing to

the pathogenesis of ASD.

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