A news article on Boston.com addresses environmental triggers as a cause of autism. About $2 million dollars are being put into a groundbreaking study that will intensely track possible environmental triggers of autism starting in the womb. According to Dr. Gary Goldstein, chairman of the scientific board Autism Speaks, until recently 90% of research focused on genetics, but that is about to change. Mark Blaxill, co-founder of Safe Minds, says that genes cannot account for the epidemic proportions that autism have reached. The article also mentions the recent study in California that found autism in 8 of 29 children whose mother lived near fields that had been sprayed with pesticide . Goldstein also spoke of Reye’s syndrome, which was easily eradicated when children stopped receiving aspirin. "Wouldn’t it be wonderful, he said, if we found something like that?"
The idea of autism having an environmental trigger is one that has been proposed before. For example in October of 2006 a press release from Cornell University suggested a connection between autism and early childhood television viewing. The study found that higher rates of autism occurred in rainy climates where children are more likely to watch TV and where they have greater access to cable. Other reports have claimed that mercury contained in children’s vaccines, or even in utero, was to blame. Some experts believe that autism is caused by vulnerable genes and environmental triggers. Nancy Duley, parent of an autistic child, perhaps put it best when she said she hopes this new study will answer one of the "burning questions" for many families of children with autism.