By: Angela

Angela — Sat, 31 May 2008 11:28:26 +0000

What are you suggesting, Bill that we institutionalize all our autistic kids? I don’t get your last comment. I live in an area where mysteriously, the water doesn’t freeze, but turns a nice luminescent green in the winter and even closer is the Bayer plant that is heavily guarded and for which no visits are allowed nor are there any published phone numbers or any links on the web for additional information. Get with the program, Man!!

By: Bill

Bill — Fri, 30 May 2008 17:21:37 +0000

There was an article in “Wired” a while back which noted the concentration of autism in Silicon Valley, and Rochester Minnesota, both areas where “Nerd Engineers” make their home and their living (not to mention all of the nurses capable of passing chemistry working at the Mayo Clinic). I have read many anecdotes about the high rates of Asperger’s among engineers, (I estimate about 1/4 of engineers), and everywhere I have worked, my peer engineers have had autistic children. so it would seem that near every power plant you would have a disproportionate population of engineers, and thus a cluster of autism cases, so why would you blame autism on mercury, when there is actually much less mercury in the environment than in years past? We used to have coal furnaces in our basements, my son’s turn of the previous century home still has coal dust on all of the floor joists, and we didn’t have an epidemic of autism then. If you think there has been an uptick in autism, ask yourself- when was the last time your community had to increase the number of beds in the facilities which are caretakers for the autistic and the retarded?

Comments on: Autism Risk Linked to Distance From Power Plants

By: Angela

By: Bill