Autism: Blame the bug killers

For reference, Dicofol, is a mitocide used in agriculture. Endosulfan is an insecticide used in agriculture, it's banned in some countries:

Endosulfan is one of the more toxic pesticides on the market today, responsible for many fatal pesticide poisoning incidents around the world. Endosulfan is also a xenoestrogen, and it can act as an endocrine disruptor, causing reproductive and developmental damage in both animals and humans. ...

Not mentioned in the following article, Fipronil, an insecticide, flea killer, the kind that people put drops of on their pets.

From the Los Angeles Times
Pesticide link to autism suspected
A state study suggests two farm sprays may raise chances of having a child with the disorder.
By Marla Cone
Times Staff Writer

July 30, 2007

Women who live near California farm fields sprayed with organochlorine pesticides may be more likely to give birth to children with autism, according to a study by state health officials to be published today.

The rate of autism among the children of 29 women who lived near the fields was extremely high, suggesting that exposure to the insecticides in the womb might have played a role. The study is the first to report a link between pesticides and the neurological disorder, which affects one in every 150 children.

But the state scientists cautioned that their finding is highly preliminary because of the small number of women and children involved and lack of evidence from other studies.

"We want to emphasize that this is exploratory research," said Dr. Mark Horton, director of the California Department of Public Health. "We have found very preliminary data that there may be an association. We are in no way concluding that there is a causal relationship between pesticide exposure of pregnant women and autism."

The two pesticides implicated are older-generation compounds developed in the 1950s and used to kill mites, primarily on cotton as well as some vegetables and other crops. Their volumes have declined substantially in recent years.

Examining three years of birth records and pesticide data, scientists from the Public Health Department determined that the Central Valley women lived within 500 meters, or 547 yards, of fields sprayed with organochlorine pesticides during their first trimester of pregnancy. Eight of them, or 28%, had children with autism. Their rate of autism was six times greater than for mothers who did not live near the fields, the study said.

Susan Kegley, senior scientist of Pesticide Action Network North America, a San Francisco-based advocacy group, said the report adds to an existing body of evidence that endosulfan and dicofol, already banned in some countries, are harmful.

"This is one of the first papers that links use of pesticide to incidence of a disease, and autism in particular," she said. "The findings are very strong. This is a sixfold risk factor in comparison to someone who is not exposed. There aren't too many studies that come out like that."

Even though small numbers of children were involved, "it is still one of those things that make you sit up and pay attention," she said.

The findings suggest that 7% of autism cases in the Central Valley during the years studied — 1996 through 1998 — might have been connected to exposure to the insecticides drifting off fields into residential areas. Births during those years were analyzed because children born later might not yet be diagnosed with autism.

...

The goal of the study was to "systematically explore the general hypothesis that residential proximity to agricultural pesticide applications during pregnancy could be associated with autism spectrum disorders in offspring," the authors wrote in their study, published online today in the scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

The scientists collected records of nearly 300,000 children born in the 19 counties of the Sacramento and San Joaquin river valleys. Of those children, 465 had autism. The scientists then compared the addresses during pregnancy to state records that detailed the location of fields sprayed with several hundred pesticides.

For most pesticides, no unusual numbers of autism cases were found, but the exception was a class of compounds called organochlorines. Most, including DDT, were banned in the United States several decades ago because they were building up in the environment. Only dicofol and endosulfan remain.

The autism rate was highest for children of those mothers who lived the closest to the fields and it declined as the distance from the fields increased.

There is no other human or animal evidence that the two chemicals can cause autism. But both affect nerves and the brain — and cause reproductive effects and alter hormones in animal tests. ...

The scientists concluded that "the possibility of a connection between gestational exposure to organochlorine pesticides and autism spectrum disorders requires further study."

A July report by the state Department of Pesticide Regulation said endosulfan can spread far from fields via the air and expose the public, based on air monitoring in Fresno, Monterey and Tulare counties. The agency is likely to designate endosulfan as a toxic air contaminant soon, and dicofol could follow. That designation triggers a review by the agency to see whether steps should be taken to minimize the chemicals drifting off fields into nearby communities.

...

The two insecticides are now used much less often than in the years in which the possible connection to autism was found. As a result, there is less likelihood that pregnant women are exposed today. Nearly 774,000 pounds were applied in 1996, compared with 277,000 pounds in 2005, down nearly 64%, according to state records.

"In the past couple years, the bottom has dropped out of these two," Brank said.

Insects have built up resistance and cotton farmers have switched to new compounds.

The two chemicals are not found in household or yard pesticides. Traces are found in food, but the study looked only at possible exposure from the air. The chemicals are used most extensively in Fresno, Kings, Imperial and Tulare counties. Dicofol is mostly used on cotton, oranges, beans and walnuts. Endosulfan is used primarily in tomato processing and on lettuce, alfalfa and cotton crops.

marla.cone@latimes.com

Bold emphasis added. This article is from the LA Times. That's the newspaper that has been such a disgusting mindless mouthpiece for Rick Rollens' quarterly scary antivaccine press releases on the "epidemic."

It's interesting how this new information would tend to implicate the poor way that most of the California Dept. of Developmental Services do outreach in their regions.

The Regional Centers that cover Fresno, Kings, Imperial and Tulare counties (Central Valley and San Diego) have low percentages of autism clients compared to the RCs that serve the more wealthy areas of LA. Central Valley has 9 percent and San Diego has 16 percent. The relative proximity of San Diego RC to the Lovaas Institute may account for it's higher percentage of autism clients. Autism Diva supposes that if one could show how many San Diego RC clients lived in cities away from agricultural spraying that it would be much higher than the number of clients who live on or near farms using pesticides. (Map showing counties by name, here.) But these agricultural areas apparently ought to be regular hot spots with there being less autism in Malibu and Hollywood and Pasadena because those cities don't have so much agricultural spraying of pesticides. Click on the maps to see them larger.

The California map shows that the Regional Centers in the largely agricultural areas have low percentages of autistic clients compared to the 6 Regional Centers with the higher autism case loads, Westside, Lanterman, Eastern LA, North LA, Harbor and Orange County.


This map of a section of California shows an estimate of how many children who were born in a particular Regional Center catchment area from 1995 to 2000 ended up being enrolled as autistic in the DDS. You can see that there is less than 1/4 the number of autistics born in the Central Valley RC than are born in the Westside RC, and other of RCs closer to the Lovaas Institute at UCLA those also having wealthier residents. Central Valley has 19 per 10,000 and Westside has 88 per 10,000.

Autism Diva's point is not that embryonic and fetal exposure to pesticides don't ever cause autism, but that the way the RCs serve these vulnerable populations is so culturally and politically driven, they do a lousy job of serving certain classes of clients, and that no one (read: Rick Rollens) should ever have used the DDS data to show any kind of true autism epidemiology. Keep in mind that David Kirby (author of Evidence of Fraud) and others have said that this very DDS client data is the "gold standard" of autism epidemiology in the United States.


When UC Davis MIND Institute's Isaac Pessah spoke at the Institute of Medicine's toxic autism workshop, this year he mentioned his concerns about several pesiticides as being possible causes of autism. One was a the flea killer used on pets, Fipronil, sold as "Frontline," and with other brand names. He also mentioned Lindane (used for head lice, scabies), Hepatchlor, Chlordane, Diledrin, Kepone and Toxaphene. The concern about these various chemicals is not that children would be exposed to them, but that women in their first trimester of pregnancy (especially) would be exposed to them. For some reason Pessah didn't name the two chemicals that ended up looking the most suspicious in this study (Difocol and Endosulfan). Dr. Pessah has been a darling of the mercury parents for his study that showed a temporary effect of mercury on mouse immune cells in a petri dish. Pessah appeared to be going where the money was at the time. Now he seems to be sort of distancing himself from the whole mercury thing.


All this talk about pesticides being a possible cause of some cases of autism is making the antivaccine folks a little nervous. They get angry about anything that tends to take attention away from their endless efforts to scare people off of vaccinating. The dyed in the wool mercury parents don't want anything to shake their followers' belief that autism is just a "misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning." They are willing to admit that some pesticides are bad, but seem to be very conflicted about this since these pesticides aren't found in vaccines and the pesticides don't contain mercury.

The quacks won't be rushing out to jump on this bit of news, not until they come up with some extremely profitable way to "cure" supposedly pesticide induced autism. Once they come up with a schtick (say ... expensive homepathic dilutions of fipronil and endosulfan and hyperbaric oxygen) they will start going to DAN! conferences and Autism One conferences telling parents that all autism is is a misdiagnosis for pesticide exposure, that they have a 95% cure rate, and that responsible parents will be sell everything they have to pay the quacks so that the parents can "get their child back."



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