

Scientists Find 'Baffling' Link between Autism and Vinyl Flooring - mcantelon
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=link-between-autism-and-vinyl

======
frossie
If you look at enough variables, you WILL find a correlation with whatever you
are looking at.

Key paragraph:

 _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._

This makes me very suspicious, because it smacks of "our unusual theory does
not bear out when we look at another country, so we will come up with another
unusual theory to explain the effect there".

Also, while I am not familiar with Sweden, there are other places where
vinyl/carpet flooring versus wood/tile correlates with socioeconomic factors.

~~~
anigbrowl
In fairness, that handwaving is from Sciam's writers; the study itself is
quoted on page 1, expressing caution against drawing conclusions: 'The data
are far from conclusive. They are puzzling, even baffling, and not readily
explicable at this time. However, because they are among the few clues that
have emerged about possible environmental contributions to autistic disorders,
we believe that they should be weighed carefully and warrant further study.'

 _If_ their insight is correct, it may be significant. Other data (eg the link
about smoking in this article, and many other sources) suggest a degree of
heritability, as well as noticing the correlation with asthma, which condition
is also thought to be heritable. Although modern vinyl flooring may be low in
phthalate emissions, they may well have been higher in the past. I grew up
with linoleum in a lot of the house, and well remember its characteristic
smell (along with those of vinyl car seats and a bunch of other plastics which
were widespread in the 1970s). While I certainly wouldn't draw conclusions
from that about having ADD - factors like parental smoking are likely to have
played a more significant role - it's worthy of further study.

~~~
mattmcknight
Even they aren't saying anything about linoleum...

"Infants or toddlers who lived in bedrooms with vinyl, or PVC, floors were
twice as likely to have autism five years later, in 2005, than those with wood
or linoleum flooring.

~~~
anigbrowl
Sorry, sloppy copy-editing on my part.

------
tokenadult
"The scientists were surprised by their finding, calling it 'far from
conclusive.' Because their research was not designed to focus on autism, they
recommend further study of larger numbers of children to see whether the link
can be confirmed."

That's the money quote in the interesting submitted article.

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

The finding is quite intriguing, and I wonder how it will filter through the
varied opinion-makers in the autism-issues blogosphere.

After edit: You're welcome for the link to Peter Norvig's article. As regular
readers here know, it is one of my favorite links to post in comments here on
HN. My further comment on the submitted article in this thread is that its
second page refers to an increase in autism in California. Statements that
autism has increased in recent decades are controversial,

<http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=4726>

<http://www.asatonline.org/about_autism/ontherise.htm>

<http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/features/counting-autism.html>

because diagnostic criteria have changed over the same period, so how much
real increase in the actual condition there has been may be much less than the
increase in recorded diagnoses.

~~~
Oxryly
I would like to nominate Mr. Norvig for the post of Internet Resident Expert
please.

------
mattmcknight
This is the most worst piece of a bad article: "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."

How could they not mention that the diagnostic criteria for autism changed
over that time period? In addition to it getting slapped on shy kids, it's
become a socially acceptable word for what used to be called mental
retardation.

~~~
Oxryly
That's a crucial point. I wonder why that angle keeps getting overlooked when
there are studies that support and explore it so well. Are the scientists
dropping the ball? Are the writers?

~~~
smallblacksun
The cynic in me says that they don't mention it because that won't generate as
much funding for autism research.

------
Legion
It's sad, but my first thought at seeing yet another weak "link" between
something and autism was, "well, better to have wacko parents shield their
children from PVC floors than from vaccines."

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>'It's sad, but my first thought at seeing yet another weak "link" between
something and autism was, "well, better to have wacko parents shield their
children from PVC floors than from vaccines."'

I guess you'd call me a wacko parent then.

When we were offered the swine flue vaccine I looked at the medical literature
as, to my mind, using an untested (long-term tests) vaccine against an unknown
risk seemed a bit chancy.

My research showed that there were associated with one of the factors
(Thiomersal) apparent risks of elevating occurrence of autism. I ruled out the
risk based on the evidence from the USA that removal of this factor over the
last few years had not lead to a consequential reduction in the number of
children suffering from autism. This seemed sufficient evidence for me to rule
out the link and go on to look at the other constituents.

Once an intial, if now discredited, link between the chemical factor and
autism was established, lacking refuting evidence, it doesn't seem "wacko" to
me to exercise caution. A large part of this is that the vaccines have been
successful in reducing incidence of the once common diseases making them known
smaller risks to weigh against the then unknown risk of inducing autism.

The evidence in the OP shows a correlation. Phthalates certainly interact in
negative ways with human biology already and so are a good thing to test - if
I were fitting a floor I'd be more inclined to something phthalates-free given
this result.

But I guess I'm just a wacko ...?

~~~
ikitat
So, you'll depend on the rest of the world to vaccinate so you can benefit
from herd immunity and not chance the impossible odds that anti-vaccine
conspiracy theories are correct?

No, maybe not a wacko, just selfish and uninformed. Vaccine preventable
diseases coming back. Children are dying at the hands of the anti-vaccine
movement.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>So, you'll depend on the rest of the world to vaccinate so you can benefit
from herd immunity

It's easy to make a remark about "anti-vaccine conspiracy theories" now that
we have evidence to show - but to expect me or anyone else simply to trust the
medical establishment has not erred in creating a new vaccine is too much.

Selfish? My children have both been immunised for the standard spread of
common [childhood] disease in my country using the established vaccines. The
swine flu vaccine was offered to us the week before vaccination was stopped -
the reports were already in that it had been vastly overstocked, that
vaccination wouldn't be effective against next seasons mutations, that other
countries had ceased immunisation, that there were barely any new cases being
reported, that it was far less virulent than expected and in addition I had a
strong suspicion that our youngest (the only one offered the vaccine) had
actually had the virus already. FWIW I've also donated to charities that make
medical interventions such as vaccination of children.

Uninformed? I've attempted to ascertain the risks involved in the vaccines
offered to us. Most have been widely tested over several years but the swine-
flu virus had not; as you saw I did rely on past empirical data to establish
some of the risk factors.

I am in no way part of an "anti-vaccine movement" I'm simply trying to use
available knowledge to reduce the risk of harm to my own family.

This does bring us back to the question of selfishness - I would let others be
guinea pigs first before risking the health of my own children. Part of the
problem is that from an immunological perspective you can expect a lot of
deaths from a vaccine and still make the call that to save the population it's
better to vaccinate.

Do you really believe that I was risking the lives of other children by not
immunising against swine flu in January of this year? (
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/8645477.stm> shows there were no
further deaths in reality in my region).

------
runT1ME
>Infants or toddlers who lived in bedrooms with vinyl, or PVC, floors were
twice as likely to have autism five years later, in 2005, than those with wood
or linoleum flooring.

Wood flooring is more expensive than vinyl, so.....really, maybe its just an
indicator of economic status...

~~~
ars
If there actually is a link to economic status that's actually very important
to know.

Lots of diseases are linked to economic status, but I've never heard of autism
being one of them.

~~~
roc
I recall reading more than a few articles about a strong positive correlation
between socioeconomic status and autism diagnosis rate.

What I've never seen addressed in any of the underlying studies, was whether
the rate could be determined to be tied to prevalence of condition or
prevalence of diagnosis.

Given the "flavor of the month" status that Autism Spectrum Disorders have
attained, I'm very skeptical that the socioeconomic link is anything more than
the same helicopter parenting that seemed to lead the explosion of attention
disorder diagnoses and prescription rates.

~~~
mkramlich
If there is a positive correlation between higher socioeconomic status
(especially in the last 10-20 years) and a higher autism diagnosis rate, I
have a theory to explain it. My pet theory is that as the rise of the Internet
and Web has placed higher economic demand for people with certain kinds of
mental skills and thought processes (programmers, computer hardware designers,
etc.), and that class of people has generally risen in wealth, and also in
marriage suitability (more money, success, greater attraction to women, etc.)
that then causes those kinds of people to be more likely to have kids, and
thus you see a spike in kids who inherited those mental traits from their
parents -- I'm guessing mostly from the father, assuming my theory is right.

It could be a combination of that effect plus the rise in widespread Internet
usage, and the massive increase in "geek out" behavior that has caused in the
general population (surfing the web, clicking on every little link, web
forums, text messaging, etc. all the kinds of things that a hyper-focused
nerdy or Asperger's like person would be more likely to engage in).

~~~
runT1ME
Likely it is the opposite though. Wood flooring is more $$ than vinyl
flooring...

------
guelo
phthalates have been linked to behavioral problems in children before,
[http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/phthalates-a...](http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/phthalates-
and-attention-deficits)

It's also been linked to asthma, allergies, endocrine disruption, obesity and
diabetes. The federal government recently banned them in children's toys.

So even if this study turns out not to hold up, you should keep this stuff
away from kids. The other worrisome chemical in plastic is BPA.

------
mnemonicsloth
In 2004, I had a friend who tried to convince me that Bush and Kerry would
both lose in the upcoming election to Woodrow Wilson.

"You see, every time the Boston Red Sox have won the World Series..."

~~~
hga
I've heard of a study that found a link between U.K. nuclear power plant sites
and cancer ... including ones they were only thinking about placing a plant
in.

------
rlpb
What if parents with autistic tendencies prefer vinyl flooring? We already
know that there is a genetic connection.

------
jganetsk
fyi, this article is from March 2009. This is not new.

------
greenlblue
I love these things. Here's a template: "Scientists find dubious link between
___ and ___."

~~~
joezydeco
"...but let's not draw any conclusions yet".

------
ohashi
Correlation != Causation.

------
wdewind
people with bad taste in flooring the link to autism?

