Aspies For Freedom

I received this article as part of a Google alert. What do you all think of it? http://www.wptv.com/content/health/mb/st...d2ec7a632a

Autism arising from being exposed to various chemicals/heavy metals is rare but has happened and has been documented before.

Also I should mention that I ate paint chips off of the floor when I was about a year old.

I was about a year old when I developed autism.

I also don't have any relatives with my condition (whatever you can call it these days, autism or not).

Make of this what you will, I guess.

I don't remember exactly what I did when I was 1 year old, but I probably came in contact with some lead. I probably also came in contact with radon, formaldehyde, carbon monoxide, selenium, oxygen, and like 400 other toxic chemicals. Correlation is not necessarily causation.

To me, this just looks like a rehash of all the mercury hoohah.

Well, I didn't just "came in contact" with lead, I ingested it. Therein lies a fairly significant difference.

From the article:

"This is all very new"

I think James Laidler actually suggested that the origin of the idea of autism caused by heavy metals began in the mid eighties somewhere. At this time it was alot of general mercury hysteria whether or not it had anything to do with autism.

More information:

Lead Poisoning- It's Not an Illness of the Past

My précis: It appears that big business kept lead-based paints in use in the US for decades after it was recognised as a poison by Australian scientists in 1897 and banned from other countries. The first bans were implemented in France, Belgium and Austria in 1909. Most other countries banned lead-based paints in the 1920s and 1930s.

When did the good ol' US of A ban the sale of them?
(NOTE: not the use; people could still re-use old stock)
1978!!

Still, the list of lead-poisoning effects does NOT include Autism. And the rate of diagnosis is lower in the US than in the UK where environmental lead has been reduced to a minimum for decades. Even lead-additives in fuel have been banned in the UK since  January 1st 2000. (By then only older cars were using it - all newer cars, which had to have catalytic converters since 1992, had been using lead-free)

How would you know this for sure?

Because I read it. The list, that is. On the site that I gave a link to. I have no idea whether or not other people have linked lead paint and Autism, I shall have to look it up!

Lead paint has been linked to mental retardation if ingested in large quantities and painters who used lead paint were well known to be very mean drunks. I don't know of any link between lead paint and autism and it is important to remember that any genetic condition can suddenly "pop up" in any given family.

I have so far found one scientific article that describes autistic behaviours along with lead poisoning in two children.

Autism and Autistic Symptoms
Associated with Childhood Lead
Poisoning

In the first case the autistic behaviour appeared at around the time of chelation to treat the lead poisoning when he was two. At 6yrs 10m he no longer met DSM-IV criteria for autistic disorder.

The second child, too, appeared perfectly normal despite high lead levels right up to the age of five, when he too was treated with chelation. At 13, he no longer met DSM-IV criteria for autistic disorder.

Both children continued to display mental retardation.

It seems to me that there are important questions to be asked regarding Autism, heavy metals and chelation.

Finally we've found a cure for NT'ism, lol.