ACSH staffers were troubled — again — by a Los Angeles Times article covering a new study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives that claims children born to mothers who live “near freeways” have twice the risk of autism. The association only held between autism and freeways — not major roads. According to the study results, children living approximately 1,000 feet from a freeway at the time of their birth faced double the risk for autism.
“How could a study like this rise to the level of getting publicity in the Los Angeles Times?” asks ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “This is one of the worst junk science articles I’ve seen in a long time.”
The evidence-basis of this assertion was never examined in any depth, as Los Angeles Times reporter Shari Roan failed to reference any health professionals with contrary arguments to the study, though she did cite the opinions of Gayle Windham, chief of the epidemiology surveillance unit with the California Department of Health Services Environmental Investigations Branch. Dr. Windham also published a study in Environmental Health Perspectives on the supposed link between autism and air pollutants in 2006.
By quoting Dr. Windham in the article, the reporter is finding someone with a confirmatory point of view who published a similar study in the same journal a few years ago, observes ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross. “Dr. Windham is not a skeptic about possible links between air pollution and autism, yet she did criticize the researchers for using distance from a freeway as a proxy measure for air pollution. For one junk scientist to call another scientist in the same field of research a junk scientist is really saying something. But the real issue here is the completely bogus insinuation that somehow exposure to automobile exhaust — even up to 1,000 feet away — might somehow contribute to autism. The concept is nonsensical, and the linkage shows how epidemiological data can be distorted to suit a particular pre-determined position.”
