Autism Study: Living Near Freeways Doubles Infant Autism Risk

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Children born to mothers living near freeways may be twice as likely to have autism, according to a study released Thursday.

The paper, published by researchers from Children's Hospital Los Angeles, the USC Keck School of Medicine and UC Davis MIND Institute found that children born to parents living within 1,000 feet of a freeway are two times as likely to have autism.

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Comments

[helen]

02:06 PM on 12/17/2010

Now I find this interesting... Is it the smog? Is it the lower-rent housing with its adjacent problems of environmental toxins and such (asbestos, lead, chemicals)? Is it from being poor and having a poor diet? Just wondering whether we have cause and effect really figured out here...

[SilentSolidarity]

02:05 PM on 12/17/2010

Is it the noise, the air pollution or both?

Well, thank the right wingers who would rather have wide, loud and dirty highways than quiet, clean and fast light rail.

[Scott Zwartz]

05:03 PM on 12/17/2010

Oh, the urban myths. Fixed-rail is not a solution to anything except decreasing profits of the industries that still linger in the 19th Century.

How people love to throw around Buzz words like Fixed-rail. Fixed-rail does not reduce traffic congestion but it brings increase population density, and the over crowding increases the social pathology. yes, let's squander trillions of dollars to construct fixed-rail transit.

It will cost $2 Trillion in 2010 dollars to construct fixed-rail subways that served LA. People forget that Los Angeles had a subway constructed in 1925 and the people would not use it so it was closed.

[phall200]

03:16 PM on 12/19/2010

This is a classic example of is meant by a little information is a dangerous thing.

[Scott Zwartz]

02:00 PM on 12/17/2010

LA built the new Helen Bernstein High school in Hollywood so that it is right next to the Hollywood Freeway on the east and Sunset Boulevard on the north. Thank you Councilman Garcetti for helping our children become autistic.

[JScott]

10:08 AM on 12/17/2010

Nother one for the 'well duh' column.


And yet they still allow residential next to freeways and not just LA a lotta other places do the same.

[Scott Zwartz]

08:47 PM on 12/16/2010

Did they adjust for income level?

[P51MUSTANG]

09:11 PM on 12/16/2010

You should meet parents whose apparently completely healthy child becomes autistic 2-3 days after receiving a multi-vaccine. And then get on Huffpo and call such parents "nut jobs." What you have is hate, contempt, without knowledge. Why don't you keep your mouth shut until it has happened to you, or you have met and talked personally to people. It may not be causal, but there is some sort of link. Maybe only 1% of kids are susceptible or have the predisposition. The point is you do not know and are talking rudely out your rear.

[dbrett480]

02:04 AM on 12/17/2010

I don't know why my comment was deleted but I am married to a pediatrician and she has told (and shown) me that there is absolutely no evidence linking autism with vaccines. Besides that it is biologically impossible for vaccines to cause autism.