NORWALK, CT-- As many as one in 90 children are today being diagnosed with autism--and autism research continues to focus almost exclusively on genetics. In its January/February 2010 issue, E-The Environmental Magazine looks at another factor that may be driving up autism rates--environmental toxicity.
Richard Lathe, Ph.D., a molecular biologist who wrote Autism, Brain, and Environment says that since the 1980s, autism rates "have gone up at least tenfold. It indicates that it can't just be genetic--it must be environmental."
"These chemicals are everywhere," says Michael Merzenich, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at the University of California San Francisco. "They've looked at levels of contamination from PBDEs in the Polar Regions and there are significant airborne levels everywhere. You really can't escape them."
The research that is taking up the environmental challenge is uncovering surprising answers--particularly in relation to the link between heavy metal toxicity and autism. Some of this research focuses on porphyrins: chemicals that increase in the blood in response to heavy metal toxicity. It turns out that autistic kids have more porphyrins in their blood following chelation--a detoxifying process--than do typical kids.
The antioxidant glutathione--critical for the body to excrete metals--plays a role, too. In 2004, researcher Jill James, Ph.D., of the Arkansas School of Medicine, led a pioneering study that showed autistic kids had significantly less glutathione than typical kids--which put their bodies in a state of "constant oxidative stress." In other words, autistic kids were genetically predisposed to having low glutathione levels, making them particularly susceptible to heavy metal toxicity. That toxicity--whether from vaccines, fish, dental amalgams, air pollution, tainted water or other environmental toxins, might provide the "toxic tipping point" to render a child autistic.
Article courtesy of Betsy Kraat-Metro Green + Business
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