Diesel Pollution Linked to Autism in Children

[wtmusic]

"Our economy runs on diesel. It's burned in the road-going rigs that bring us everything from potatoes to potpourris. If it's on a store shelf, it likely arrived by oil-burning truck. Increasingly, diesel engines are also finding a home in our passenger cars, migrating from Europe, where they've long been popular.

And why not? With a higher energy density than gasoline, diesel fuel gives us more miles per gram of emitted CO2 and the engines that use it tend to give us motivational torque in a lower RPM range, where it's more useful. It appears, however, that there may be some substantial trade-offs when it comes to the effect of their exhaust particulate on our most precious resource: our children.

Women exposed to higher air pollution levels during their pregnancies were twice as likely to give birth to an autistic child.

A large, new study makes a solid link between air pollution and incidences of autism, with diesel particulate and mercury named as the most significant contributors. Research from the Harvard University's School of Public Health, drawing on 116,430 participants in the ongoing Nurses' Health Study, found that women exposed to higher air pollution levels during their pregnancies were twice as likely to give birth to an autistic child than those living in a cleaner environment. Previous studies have found similar connections."

http://green.autoblog.com/2013/06/23/diesel-particulates-other-air-pollutants-linked-to-autism-in-ch/

[Buzz Clik]

1. This sounds like a statistical correlation study rather than looking at the physiological cause.

It's a start.