Whenever someone says “I’m OK with microplastics polluting my body, it’s not like they are known to be harmful” I usually suggest to look up xenoestrogens[0]. For years their link to hormonal disruption has seemingly been well-sourced on Wikipedia, and it would be reasonable to assume there may be more interactions than would take longer to identify (considering our generally mediocre understanding of our own physiology).
If the link between BPA and autism is confirmed, it could be reasonable to have a closer look at other xenoestrogens (like DDT, still not banned in some SEA countries, or zeranol).
The connection between autism and atypical estrogen signaling has been something I have been studying for a while. This paper explicitly mentions Aromatase, but there are other routes to have estrogen signaling insufficiency or excess such as genetic variants on ESR1. For anyone that wants a deeper dive into sex hormones hormones, how it modulates the brain and in particular estrogen deficiency checkout this well put together literature review: "Giftedness and atypical sexual differentiation: enhanced perceptual functioning through estrogen deficiency instead of androgen excess" https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/endocrinology/articles/...
Many software engineers can be found in this group as having enhanced spatial visualization skills is a perfect fit for coding.
If the link between BPA and autism is confirmed, it could be reasonable to have a closer look at other xenoestrogens (like DDT, still not banned in some SEA countries, or zeranol).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenoestrogen