Originally published at: Scientists hunt possible link between common plastic additive and autism and ADHD | Boing Boing
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This has been in evidence for several years. More evidence is always welcome, but this is not really “new.” The fact that nothing has been done about, other than having some plastic bottles labeled “BPA free” (while not commenting on what other plasticizers are present) just confirms my feeling that we are dead set on creating a world that is hostile to developing human brains. I hate it.
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It’s important to have more information on this before another Jenny McCarthy comes along to rail against cheap sippy bottles
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Will they move away from the vaccine nonsense?
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Going by their history, it could end up turning into something even more stupid
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This study does NOT show that ASD might be caused by plastics!
This study shows that many autistics have difficulty removing toxins from their bodies. That is a completely different thing!
Autism sadly frequently comes with multiple physical, genetic & other health problems, therefore it is not at all surprising, that many autistic people are not able to efficiently flush toxins from their bodies.
I inherited my autism from my father & his family, who were all born before plastics were even invented!
No one disputes that many plastics are nasty toxins, but a potential cause of autism - NO!
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Phew! I guess that settles it then.
Welcome aboard, Comrade!
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Or, plasticizers are just the most recent form of toxins that build up in people with the deficiency found in this most recent study, because of their ridiculously wide distribution. Before plastics became so widely used, it may have been some other form of toxin that has since been regulated out of existence. As the authors themselves note, more study is required, because the question is still open. That means that the position that plasticizers definitely cause autism is as accurate as your position that they definitely don’t.
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It’s pretty clear that plasticizers like BPA are bad for you, but the effects are consistently individually weak, built up over a lifetime, and mostly visible at the population level. If anyone tells me their study of <150 people with 2 different medical conditions that takes a snapshot of metabolic activity at a moment in time has enough statistical power to successfully detect its effects… just no. If BPA had effects that large and that causal it would’ve been incredibly, unmistakably obvious decades ago, on the scale of cigarettes, leaded gas, and thalidomide. Whatever this study is actually showing, “BPA causes autism and ADHD” isn’t it.
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Exactly why there are multiple papers on the correlation but none proving causation. Yeah, there have been indications for a while now, but as you point out, it’s never been a huge signal. I avoid BPAs as much as possible, and i suspect that’s good advice in general, but there is just no smoking gun as yet. (Although some mouse studies are pretty close, but just like with Teflon, not close enough.)
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Or, to look at it another way (same as with titanium dioxide, sodium benzoate, aluminum or paraffin):
What’s the recommended daily allowance RDI of BPA? That’s how much I prefer to ingest.
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This is the very definition of a study barely worth reporting right now - the scientific equivalent of analyzing football players’ athletic performance as they run onto the field for a game. The work is leading somewhere, but we definitely haven’t seen the interesting part yet.
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So, so, so many factors and comorbidities magnify symptoms of ADHD and autism. My personal bugaboos are population-wide endemic sleep deprivation, adverse childhood experiences, ineffective education, menopause, mental health treatment stigma, PTSD, undiagnosed polycystic ovarian syndrome, genetic susceptibility to addiction, crippling joint disorders that interfere with the ability to exercise, and undiagnosed or ineffectively treated sleep apnea.
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In the context of a discussion about ADHD and autism, the irony of discussing the amount of anything someone prefers to ingest is palpable. 
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Probable just a side effect, I remember reading a while ago. Thou it was a limited study as they could only get 12 brains, that ASD brains weighed more than normal brains from 25% to 50% as they where denser than normal, and this was put down to the fact that they where not as good as pruning unusefull connections, in the same way as normal brain would during development. A protean was lacking.
and that this over connected ness being random was why it was a spectrum and some brains where pruning better than others but just not as well as they should
… we know how journalists will print anything from “a new study” as if it is a fact
Journalists' Brains Function at a Lower Level Than Average, Study Says
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Something seems off with the Math in this part “A Bonferroni adjustment of 0.05/12 (= 0.0125) was employed to control for the family- wise error rate from conducting 12 mean rank comparisons”.
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