Researchers at U.C. Davis are trying to connect the dots leading to 10 autism clusters in California. One theory is that those parents are using certain hazardous household products, exposing their kids to dangers linked to the neuro-developmental disorder that usually surfaces by the time a child turns three.

According to the Contra Costa Times and other news sources reporting the findings, the study authors don’t attribute the cases to a toxic waste plant or other widespread polluter, but rather to household items like cleaners or landscaping products.

The report released by the University this week says the clusters show autism rates nearly twice the amount of ones in surrounding areas, including three in the Bay Area: Parts of Redwood City, San Carlos and Belmong; Parts of Santa Clara and Sunnyvale; Western San Francisco. No clusters were found in the East Bay.

Other clusters are in Southern California and the Central Valley. And one San Diego cluster was found to have rates of 61.2 per 10,000 births, compared with 27.1 per 10,000 births in the surrounding region. The researchers said the study is the first one looking at the geography of autism births in the state to learn of local sections of elevated environmental risk.

In producing the study, which was published online in the journal Autism Research, the scientists looked at nearly all of the 2.5 million births recorded in California from 1996 to 2000. The report says some 10,000 children born during that period were later diagnosed with autism.

The scientists who conducted the study are now conducting two additional studies examining the environmental causes of autism, and plan to collect dust samples from the homes of 1,300 families to see if common chemicals are the culprits.

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A new study by University of California scientists finds exposure to local traffic-generated pollution increases a pregnant woman’s risk of developing preeclampsia (pregnancy-induced hypertension) and/or having a premature baby.

The study focused on a review of over 81,000 medical records that documented births in the Long Beach/Orange County area between 1997 and 2006. Having built a database capable of estimating what the pregnant women breathed within the three kilometres of their homes, the researchers examined the records to determine where the highest numbers of premature births and preeclampsia occurred.

Correlating the database with birth records showed that living in an area with the highest levels of car and truck emissions increased the risk of a pregnant women having a “very preterm delivery” (when the fetus was less than 30 weeks old) by 128 percent. Furthermore, living in this high-risk area also appeared to increase the risk of developing preeclampsia (pregnancy-induced hypertension) by as much as 42 percent.

The study’s lead author, Jun Wu, an assistant professor of epidemiology at UC Irvine, said results like this indicate the importance of doctors making their pregnant patients aware of these issues so that they can take can reduce the risk as much as possible with precautions such as closing their windows at home and when in the car.

Study abstract

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According to a new study published in the recent Acta Pædiatrica journal, American women might be wise to skip the baby making during spring and summer months. The study, which analyzed the 30.1 million births in the United States between 1996 and 2002, found that there was an increased number of babies with birth defects born to those women who conceived in April, May, June, and July.

But what’s behind all this? Turns out this is the time of the year when there is also an increase in the levels of pesticides in the surface water across the United States. These pesticides include atrazine (which is banned in Europe but still used in the United States) and nitrates, chemicals already suspected to be harmful to the developing embryo.

But this is the first time that a study has been able to link the increased seasonal concentration of pesticides in surface water to a similar increase in birth defects in newborns conceived in the same months.

This is an important finding, for as Dr Winchester, lead author, says -¦ if our suspicions are right and pesticides are contributing to birth defect risk, we can reverse or modify the factors that are causing these lifelong and often very serious medical problems.”

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