Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician who is director of the Children's Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, called the results "intriguing, but in my mind preliminary because they are based on very small numbers." Landrigan said he has "no doubt that environmental exposures are involved in causation of autism," but he suspects the most significant exposures occur not in childhood, but early in pregnancy, "when the basic architecture of the brain is still being established."
The researchers relied on questionnaires and did not measure any chemicals in the homes, which limits the reliability of the findings because they do not know for certain that the children were exposed to phthalates. Previous studies have found that phthalates are common in household dust.
Phthalates are used as softeners in plastic for vinyl flooring as well as other building materials, toys and medical equipment. The chemicals have become increasing controversial in recent years, with Congress last year banning their use in children's products.
The American Chemistry Council, representing chemical companies producing phthalates, said in a statement Monday that the new study does not prove a link between the chemicals and autism. "No other means for assessing these children existed except for the questionnaire and the parent's responses, making this finding rather insignificant," said Chris Bryant, the group's managing director. Autism, he said, "was not systematically analyzed, but just happened to be a question asked five years into the study."
The industry group has said flooring emits "extremely low" levels of phthalates. Because the compounds are heavy molecules with low volatility, they do not tend to evaporate, and wear and tear that might release particles into dust is slight, they said.
Vinyl flooring is commonplace in Sweden, where only about 1 percent of homes have carpeted floors. But it is uncommon in U.S. bedrooms, so it may not be related to autism among American children. However, carpeting contains other contaminants, including pesticides and brominated flame retardants, which have been found to harm brain development in animal tests.
The scientists said their new finding "suggests that studies of other chemical contaminants with endocrine disruptor properties might yield useful insights into the genesis of" autism.
Previously, three studies in California have found a connection between children's exposure to household or agricultural pesticides and autism.
Rates of autism in California have increased seven-fold since 1990, a recent study found. Because genetics do not change that quickly, scientists suspect that chemical pollutants are probably playing a role. But there have been few studies attempting to pinpoint which chemicals, or combination of chemicals.
This article originally ran at Environmental Health News, a news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.
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54 Comments
Add CommentWow, huh? I guess the next thing we find out will be how children with autism don't handle environmental toxins as well as children without autism. Brilliant.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyone do a heavy metal toxin study on these kids? My guess is that these kids got a lot more going on than absorbing the toxins from vinyl flooring .
How about looking at WHY?
It reminds me of the use of lead plumbing for water pipes and the fall of the Roman Empire.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPhthalates are proved to cause many other problems too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://drkhalidmunir.googlepages.com/rhincompatibility2
downloadPPT from the link to environmental hazards here. It will enable you to understand the dangers of phthalates which are found in these floorings. http://drkhalidmunir.googlepages.com/rhincompatibility2
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this--
Dr Khalid
When I was a kid. There was only maybe one kid in the neighborhood that had asthsma. That scrawny lttle guy with glasses, who never came outside.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe had wooden floors.
Now just about everybody has asthsma/bronchitis/COPD, and inhalers have become common place.
Just about everyone has carpet...
I personally believe that asthma is caused by the overuse of cleaning products leading to a retardation of the developing immune system. It simply doesn't get enough "target practice". It may also be that these cleaning products contain harmful chemicals that inflame the lungs and perhaps cause all sorts of damage. Perhaps it isn't the linoleum floors, perhaps it's the cleaners they're using on them?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI personally love hardwood floors. Rugs work just fine for covering these floors, no need to cover them with carpet.
Rugs get dirty far easier than vinyl floors do. So rugs harbor bugs. Babies crawl on the floor and get exposed to far more bugs on carpet than they do on vinyl. Their immune system therefore gets exercised much earlier on in this case, and will probably protect them from the consequences of exposure to pathogens later on in their life, which could prevent autism were it caused by an over-eager immune response.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course, all of this is pure speculation, and nobody really knows what causes autism. So let's not starting pointing the finger at phthalates or anything else until we have a better, or even any, understanding of the mechanism behind this condition.
I understand that phthalates are a large part of the 'new car' smell. New car sales are much higher now than 20 years ago when autism was less common (or just not diagnosed). Could there be a link?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe people commenting on this article have assumed vinyl flooring causes autism by some unknown mechanism. There may be other explanations compatible with the data but with cause and effect reversed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAutism increases the chances of higher than normal sensitivity to textures. You may be familiar with clothes being described as 'too scratchy', and of having to wash clothes multiple times before they can be tolerated.
The same issue applies to floor coverings. If you give an autistic person the choice of a room with carpet floor or vinyl floor and they've got a sensitivity to textures, they're more likely to go for the smoother vinyl surface.
Did anyone catch the PigWoman (I don't mean to make an ad hominin attack, but she looked exactly like Chief Wiggim in a dress) head of the American Chemical testifying before Congress? Funny how all of the Republican Senators lauded their efforts and refuted the scientific studies linking phthalates to sexual deformities, while every Democrat Senator cited the scientific evidence and called for phasing it out. See how much your Republican representatives care about the family?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is very little vynil flooring in Puerto Rico (not a common flooring here) and there is a really high autism rate. they shouldn't even go there...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat has not been addressed here fully but mention is the lack of ventilation. The ventilation problem which came about due to new building codes to help address energy consumption in our homes. In California the State has admited that these tighter house rules is what brought about the mold problems in our buildings, mold which is harmfull to sensitive people. The state is now creating more rules to address this, instead of reversing them of course. Vinyl has been around a long time but the lack of ventilation is relatively new, and it occurs at about the same time we saw increases in autism. Wouldn't it be ironic if once again it was government regulations that caused the problem. I will give you a prime example. A local school that I and two previous generations attended had operable windows, thus half the year ventilation was provide naturally by opening the windows. A few years ago they replaced them all with fixed windows to control leakage, of course now they have to run the forced air system continuously during school hours, actually using more energy than before and forcing the kids to breath filtered air, and they wonder why theres an increase in illness's
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe have all wood floors in our home and my daughter has severe asthma and my son is autistic and has no asthma. As a matter of fact, i don't know anybody that has vinyl flooring. as far as the Mother's smoking theory, we would all be autistic if that were the case. Back when I was born, all of the women and men smoked. Unless there are new additives that were not in cigarettes back then that cause autism. (Think-Different World by Bucky Covington)Please!"family economic problems" that's a crock! I know rich and poor families that have autistic family members. I'm not a Scientist though and am open to reasonable, logical, possible causes. At least someone is trying to figure it out. While they are spending all of that money, It would be nice to spend some of it on making the lives of people living with Autism easier.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFreeSpiritUSA
All of you may have forgot that there a link in genes with Autism and as peterb said an autistic person will chose a vinyl floor over carpet. So it my be the genes of the parent who chose of vinyl.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is not really "news" .. pediatricians have suspected this and other environmental toxins for years ...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.ourstolenfuture.org/Commentary/News/2003/2003-0604-RH-pedphthalates.htm
How about looking into the increasing number of epidurals? It seems that when we were having "natural childbirth" there weren't so many cases of autism.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree there's definately cause to suspect a number of chemicals that are now present in our environment and that we are exposed to for long periods of time. I am not a scientist, but I wonder how vitamin supplementation might affect in autism in that it might cause autism. Pregnant women now take prenatal vitamins and load up on folic acid to avoid spina bifida. I'm curious to know if folic acid can prevent spina bifida, what can it cause? What can additional B vitamins cause in a fetus when we know they affect the brain and the rest of the nervous system? Maybe it's our nutritional changes that are affecting the rates of autism.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've worked with autistic patients and they have had all sorts of tests looking for heavy metal toxins. Ever since lead paint issues heavy metals are pretty common to test for. It's newer chemicals that are suspect, but it's incredibly hard to not only find the exact chemical or chemicals (that's first, like possibly in this study) and then it's the why, which is often even harder.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAutism is increasing at alarming rates in a relatively short period of time. It's a massively complex issue everyone wants to find a magic bullet for. I think that's why so many people wanted vaccines to be the culprit. Unfortunately, it's not that cut and dry. It'll probably end up being something found by accident (like the vinyl floors) like many medical discoveries are. The answer rarely lies in the places you think it will.
Someone in the medical world needs to explore how epidurals given to women in childbirth might be contributing to autism. Seems like when we were doing "natural" childbirth, you weren't having so many cases of autism.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAutism is identified in newborns who respond to sound rather than eye contact. If vinyl is a factor it is more likely that the mother has transmitted phthalates to the develoing ovum.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this*sigh* I love how news reports on autism/heart disease/cancer/etc always say things like "the risk DOUBLES" or "the risk was cut in half" without reporting actual incidence. In this case, the overall incidence of autism is 72/4,779 = 1.5%. Assuming half the households have vinyl floors, a "doubling" would mean an increase from 1% to 2% incidence... which is nowhere close to statistically significant.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI too have a daughter on the Autism Spectrum. And totally agree with Free Spirit USA! Thank you for making some common sense here. Fundamentally, we cannot measure an infants immune system so how would one really know if it were compromised? The over loaded vaccine schedule must at least be taken into some consideration on top of all of the toxic chemicals that plague our environment. Can we just get back to what chemicals really do and how they affect our health and stop the psycho babble? The reason why many parents who have children with Autism have economic hardships is because the cost of therapeutic interventions has put them in to POOR HOUSE!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for listening.
Mother of a beautiful ASD 7 year old
And so the wholesale onslaught on phthalates continues. All of a sudden phthalates are responsible for everything.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPersonally, I suspect most autism is misdiagnosed these days because for some strange reason it's become fashionable to have an autistic child. I read some idiot article the other day about some dingleberry who thought autism was beautiful and mysterious.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe reason I think autism is misdiagnosed is because I hear story after story from parents of an autistic child who claim that after "months" of testing, their child was "finally" diagnosed with autism.
Sorry. But if your child has autism, it takes about 15 minutes to figure it out. If they have Aspergers, which is a very high-functioning autism, it takes about two hours, plus maybe another 6 hours just to make sure.
I think most of what passes for autism these days are children who are suffering emotional scarring and dysfunction by being dumped in commercial orphanages called daycare five days a week from infant-hood on by women who think their career is more important than parenting.
I speak as the father of three autistic children. Two with traditional autism, the third with Aspergers.
Seems logical that if phthalates are involved, poor ventilation would tend to concentrate levels of phthalates and thus enhance the intake of the chemical by children. Since phthalates are also found in baby nursing bottles, the added intake from flooring may prove so overwhelming that autism is possible as a result. One wonders if vaccinations, albeit declared safe from directly causing autism, might be a stressful catalyst that triggers the onset of autism in children who have built up excessive levels of phthalates from flooring, baby bottles and other sources.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would worry about the vinyl , but I would really worry about what was under the vinyl . Adhesives and the wood material--particle board--not generallyused in the U.S. for under vinyl but this is a killer of a combination--believe me it is !!!!! You idiots before this post are froggin idiots--you don't have a clue do you?????????????????????????
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf the only correlation was to vinyl flooring, then I would think that there could be many cause-effect relationships. But when you include the correlation with low ventilation and smoking, I think that this is another good indication that too many chemicals in our environment are causing problems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPart of the problem is that even wood flooring is not chemical free anymore. When I was growing up our floor was solid oak nailed to wooden beams. No chemicals at all. Now we have "engineered" wood flooring with adhesives and polymer coatings which are outgassing who knows what. Getting back to a more natural environment is not going to be cheap or easy.
Democrats and Republicans both disregard white families.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI heard autism came from exposure to mercury, like that used "as a preservative" in vaccines given by needle injections.
When I was a kid, everyone was using rotary telephones and autism was pretty much unheard off.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow everyone is using touch-tone phones and autism is all over the place!
Coincidence?
"If you give an autistic person the choice of a room with carpet floor or vinyl floor and they've got a sensitivity to textures, they're more likely to go for the smoother vinyl surface."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this...but would their preferences be prevalent enough in their behaviors and speech to articulate an endorsement for their parents to go out and buy vinyl flooring? I doubt that.
Right !! We should definitely be seeking-out those dastardly manufacturers of vinyl flooring because they absolutely, positively knew that their products were going to cause these problems ! It's a conspiracy by those billions of vinyl tiles.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy no mention of Thiermosal in your article ?
Lead pipes are still used on older parts of cities where life is cheap. For example, Winnipeg, MB.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe studies for what causes autism need to keep coming. Many parents of autistic children, including myself, want to know what is causing it, and are tired of hearing what doesn't. Any way we can discover a clue is good. And this could be a clue, so no critisism is needed. Please, everybody, pour as much money as possible into more research.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't think there's much texture difference between linoleum and vinyl
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs autism rates have increased, mental retardation and learning-disabled rates have decreased...at the exact same rate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn other words, there has actually been no increase.
Substitutionary diagnosis.
Similarly, shellshock is no longer something which afflicts people coming back from wars, and PTSD is "on the rise", yes, at the exact same rate.
These people are preying on the pain of parents, giving them someone to blame, and making filthy lucre on the whole deal.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/04/evidence_against_an_autism_epi.php
Read and learn.
"The Contribution of Diagnostic Substitution to the Growing Administrative Prevalence of Autism in US Special Education."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom the journal Pediatrics.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/117/4/1028
I blame global warming
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfrgough, very plausible that we are "creating" a generation of Autism, or children that after time, can fit the mold to eventually be diagnosed. We have become a very dis-connected, self absorbed, cram as much into one day as possible type society.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChildren are in day care from sh0rtly after birth. They have little to no real time in a day to connect with a human, let alone not be over scheduled into every extra curricular activity (remember when only some kids did extra curricular? Some got to actually play outside and interact with other children, or only played a sport or an instrument, not both, or were not put in front of TV, gameboy, or computer to entertain them) known to man.
It's no wonder that some of these kids *appear* Autistic, given their sensory issues (grass, what's grass feel like yuk), their lack of socialization, and general institutional like life that they are forced to live.
Mother of an Aspie, educator to many REAL autistic children!
My suspicion is that autism is being used for a variety of problems caused by a mix of genetic, developmental, environmental and cultural factors. I was struck by an interview on NPR with a middle aged woman with "autism" who has an advanced degree, but still describes how she thinks differently and how because of that she can't really have a relationship with someone. I would argue that someone with an advanced degree and relationship issues is normal. And I also think a case can be made that autism is somehow related to consumption of industrial products. Whether the causes are environmental, cultural or genetic the relationship seems to stick. Strangely, the correlations with products are more predictive than the vaccine model that some folks refuse to let go of.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPhthalates were common in many products before vinyl floors became common. This leads to possible suspicion about the conclusion. Also, not all floors contain phthalates. Many vinyl flooring products however contain triaryl phosphate flame retardent plasticizers. Head space gas chromatography-mass spectrometry of some flooring products has shown phenolic compounds from breakdown of these products. In addition, tri-aryl phosphates are suspected neurotoxins. Thus while phthalate may not be the problem, vinyl flooring still might be suspect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCorelation does not prove causality. Peterb (4/1) has an interesting hypothesis.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI love simpsons, not, i think the simpson contribute to the declining economy and intelligence of the upcoming generation. Family Guy as well is not a show worth watching
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf they suspect a pregnant mothers absorption of these chemicals is to blame let's start to question all the adhesives, dyes, plastics that keep our shoes together. You certainly can't find a pair of shoes that were not made in China. I'd love to audit the chemical composition of my shoe collection.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTry a corellation between houses with availability of mirrors and reflecting surfaces and autism.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf its due to the creation of 'self' in reflected images - Autism will be less in houses with more reflecting surfaces.
(maybe less condensation on windows.
Perhaps floors produce a distorted sende of self which adds to Autism etc.
Anyone know of a safe product one might coat a vinyl floor with to protect from this toxin?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne problem with many medical studies is how well the experiment/survey/study was designed. Were the samples selected representative of the population? Were the samples selected reasonably random to avoid bias? Is it enough to attribute the effect to one cause or is the cause attributable to several causes? How are the causes to be categorised? Which causes are triggers, catalysts or promoters of the effect? In what proportion or combination? Is the sequence and time of exposure to each cause relevant to the effect? Are different people vulnerable to different proportions, combinations, sequence of exposure, or time of exposure to each cause?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother problem is how the results are reported and a further problem is how the results are interpreted and commented on by others.
Twenty years ago the late Dr Carl Sagan commented in his Cosmos TV series (I am paraphrasing here) that we continue to load the Earth's environment with chemicals about whose long term effects we know nothing.
As an Electronics Engineering student, I did a report on the biological effects of electromagnetic radiation of different wavelengths on tissues. One of the references mentioned that cancers have more than one cause, and some causes are promoters, such as a particular chemical, infectious agent or electromagnetic radiation. The text mentioned that a person may be exposed to cancer causing chemicals but if they are not exposed to promoters then the cancer may not express itself in their bodies. And this also depends on an individual's immune response.
I myself have had asthma. It first appeared in my early twenties and was treated for six months with medication I had to breathe in. My ashtma disappeared, and the doctor warned me that it may or may not return. Twenty years later in my mid-Forties it came back. I had to go on an inhaler, and was told by a different Doctor that I would never be able to stop using an inhaler. All this time I had been living in Sydney, New South Wales.
In my late forties, I started to holiday in Melbourne, Victoria, and even though I spent a few days on long weekends, I started to notice how much better I felt, and then feeling back to my old worse self when I returned to Sydney.
I have now moved permanently to Melbourne; a month later, and I do not feel asthmatic anymore. The air in Melbourne is far cleaner than Sydney's, due to Sydney's geology, geography and the temperature inversion traps Sydney's road transport air pollution for months. Melbourne's geography and geology allows winds to clean the air.
This is a wonderful example of why correlation studies cannot prove causation, a fact which was of enormous benefit to the cigarette industry. Could it be that people who do not have vinyl flooring are less likely to be involved in computer-related industries such as writing computer code, an occupation that is ideally suited to Asperger-type people? Is there a link between life-style and vinyl flooring? Do older, more affluent parents with more technical jobs have a higher rate of vinyl floor ownership? Nobody has done controlled experiments to try to induce autism, and if they did, would not survive long in the scientific community, so it is hard to find a provable "cause," but if there is indeed an increasing rate of autism in industrialized countries, it may well be linked to activities and compounds mostly found in those countries. Fortunately, those countries also need more computer programmers than do simpler societies, so maybe it will all work out for the best in the end.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt least one study (for which I do not have a citation) indicated a higher incidence of autism among children of people living in the Silicon Valley area, and it is unlikely that this is caused by inhalation of dust from microchip recycling.
Nice post on public awareness. Its really very helpful, Thanks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this<a href="www.flooring2day.com">Vinyl flooring Arizona</a>
Another interesting thought (contributed by my wife, actually) is that people with children prefer vinyl floors because they are the easiest to clean up. So while this would not affect the rate of autism by itself, possibly people with vinyl floors, having had a more pleasant experience in cleaning up after a first child are more likely to have additional children, and the more children a couple has, the greater the chance that at least one of them will suffer from some degree of autism, whether or not it has an identifiable "cause" or is just something that occurs in a population at a constant rate, regardless of what is going on in the environment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"As autism rates have increased, mental retardation and learning-disabled rates have decreased...at the exact same rate."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually Taqq, you should do a little research. California is the only state that has been keeping tabs on ALL mental health dx in school age children since the 40s and 50s... not just autism. What you are talking about is the Hidden Horde Theory, and it was pretty much discredited about ten years ago.
All the factors fit when you realize that we began sending children to daycare much more in the last 20 to 30 years than in the past. Daycares don't always give children the individual attention that they need and "institutional autism" is the result. Parents ease their guilt with the phrase "quality time" which is illogical. The child can't distinguish quality time from quantity of time. A working parent is lucky to spend 2 hours with the child before bedtime during the work week, and most parents are exhausted at the end of the day. The survey should ask what type of flooring the daycare has, not what type of flooring the home has. Most daycares have newer vinyl flooring, not wood or carpet because it is easy to clean. If a chemical in the vinyl is toxic, the children are exposed to it at daycare and spend more time on the floor there than at home. Also, a child in daycare may spend more time on the floor than a child cared for at home who is picked up more often.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs far as the wealthy Valley in California having a high rate of autism, this is a successful area where there are motivated professionals who may put their children in daycare at a high rate. It would be interesting to see a study of the daycare versus home care children autism rates. I realize that it would be very difficult to accept if it turned out that autism was even partially due to neglect. Some mothers really do have to work to support their families, but many could find a way to do with less while their children are young.
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Scary! It's a great thing that we have come a long way in <a href="http://www.basementwaterproofingwinnipeg.com/en/">waterproofing winnipeg</a> is a quite damp location. I'm glad there are other options besides vinyl flooring!
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