The Autism News

The Autism News | English

By Anne Hart | Sacramento Nutrition Examiner

Scientists say it’s still not conclusive, but baffling as it is, a recent Swedish study published in March 2009 has linked vinyl flooring to autism. See the March 31, 2009, Scientific American article, “Scientists Find ‘Baffling’ Link between Autism and Vinyl Flooring.” The link between homes or apartments with vinyl flooring and autism is the phthalates in the vinyl that creep out. Homes with wooden or linoleum floors aren’t affected.

Swedish scientists began by first studying indoor air pollutants causing allergies and asthma, when the results turned up about the phthalates in the vinyl linked to autism. You can read a growing body of scientific studies showing evidence that autism and asthma are connected to phthalates that turn up in vinyl flooring, vinyl shower curtains, and other similar plastics.

It’s not food allergies or mercury in vaccines this time. It’s the phthalates in vinyl flooring and vinyl shower curtains. Phthalates are one of the ingredients put in soft plastic that have been studied due to the connection between phthalates and allergies, including asthma.

Contact the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice if you need more information to understand the technical issues and questions you have about chemical exposures. A co-author of the study is Bernard Weiss, a professor of environmental medicine at University of Rochester. The researchers found vinyl flooring associated with autism.

Also involved in the study were the mother’s smoking, family economic problems, and condensation on windows. Scientists looked also for poor ventilation. But why pick on plastics rather than smoking and poor ventilation? The answer is that babies and toddlers sleeping and playing 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.  You can read the study in the Journal of Neurotoxicology.

Also see the study, Autism Spectrum Disorders in Relation to Distribution of Hazardous Air Pollutants in the San Francisco Bay Area. See another study, Predicting residential exposure to phthalate plasticizer emitted from vinyl flooring: a mechanistic analysis.

Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) materials have been linked to asthma in several epidemiologic studies, but the possible causal factors remain unknown. See Experimental PVC material challenge in subjects with occupational PVC exposure.

Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) seems to be the culprit along with vinyl flooring. “A greater proportion of children with autism spectrum disorder were reported to have PVC as flooring material in the child’s and the parent’s bedroom in 2000 compared to children without autism spectrum disorder,” the scientists wrote in the Journal Neurotoxicology. “Furthermore, children with autism spectrum disorder were reported to live in homes with more condensation on the inside of the windows, which…may be seen as an indicator for deficient ventilation.”

Children in the Swedish study also were twice as likely to have autism if their mothers smoked cigarettes. The autistic children also were more likely to have asthma. You can read more on this topic in the Journal Neurotoxicology.

Research the lead investigator’s publication. Carl-Gustav Bornehag of Karlstad University in Sweden is the lead investigator on this study. He found in 2004 a high rate of asthma and allergies among children living in households with dust containing phthalates.

Read Dr. Bornehag’s article, Modern Chemicals and Indoor Environment. Indoor air researchers are studying phthalates, chemicals added to plastics (PVC) to make them soft, pliable, and useful that are found in indoor air and dust.

Dr. Bornehag’s article also notes, “One plasticizer, DEHP has been measured by Swedish, Danish, and American researchers in indoor air at concentrations that might typically result in daily human intake approaching the daily dose of the estrogenic compounds in widely-used birth control pills. So, it is suggested, that as a result of the widespread use of plastics containing these hormone-like chemicals, in some indoor environments, occupants may be inhaling the mass-equivalent of the estrogenic component of a birth control pill every day.”

It’s not only the vinyl flooring or the polyvinyl chloride (PVC) materials. It’s also the dust in the house, dust so small you can’t see it that contain phthalates and continuously float in the air where the family breathes it constantly in the bedroom or any other room where people spend long hours.

Global phthalate ester production has increased from very low levels at the end of World War II to approximately 3.5 million metric tons/year. See the article, The Association between Asthma and Allergic Symptoms in Children and Phthalates in House Dust: A Nested Case-Control Study.

At this time, scientists have found a link between vinyl flooring and autism and PVCs and autism with links to asthma and allergies. The direct link is not conclusive as yet, but the evidence is accumulating fast. According to Dr. Bonehag’s article, “Chemical exposure historically has been dominated by occupational exposure, but today we know that chemical exposures are dominated by products widely used in the home environment and in daily life.”

See the article, Asthma and Allergic Symptoms in Children and Phthalates in House: Discussion. Phthalate dust concentrations in the home, especially in the bedrooms have been studied. It’s notable that increases in autism, asthma, and allergies have occurred during a period when plasticized products have become ubiquitous in the homes, schools, and workplaces of the developed world. Phthalates as well as PVCs are showing up in people’s urine and in the blood of newborns.

Although inconclusive currently, it’s only a matter of time when scientists will be able to tell parents whether their children’s autism has anything to do with the vinyl floors and shower curtains in the home, especially in the bedrooms. But the evidence looks promising.

Source: http://www.examiner.com/x-7160-Sacramento-Nutrition-Examiner~y2009m6d19-How-vinyl-flooring-is-linked-to-autism

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The Autism News English add, ADHD, ASD, autism, Autism Spectrum Disorders, autistic, Bernard Weiss, Distribution of Hazardous Air Pollutants, Dr. Bornehag, Journal Neurotoxicology, phthalates, PVC, Swedish study, University of Rochester, vinyl flooring