“Could chemicals cause autism? - Examiner” plus 3 more |
- Could chemicals cause autism? - Examiner
- Autism specialist added at Mercy Children's Hospital - WTVG
- Grandparents Often Help Support Kids With Autism - WBUR
- Autism and Help - Associated Content
| Could chemicals cause autism? - Examiner Posted: 22 Apr 2010 11:31 AM PDT Dr. Phillip Landigran director of Children's Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai, believes so. In an interview to the Daily Green Magazine Dr. Landigran claims that autism is a combination of genetic factors and exposure to chemicals. To test his hypothesis, he has already signed up 10,000,000 American families to participate in a longitudinal study that will span 20 years. Dr. Landigran believes that prenatal exposure to certain chemicals in the environment may cause low birth weight, premature babies and learning disabilities later on. In an interesting side note, he sites an El Paso study he conducted in the 1970's. He studied the IQ's of children living next to the lead smoldering Asarco plant. The results were that 60% of those children had lead poisoning that caused irreparable damage to the brain. Even children with lower levels of lead were at risk of developing brain damage. The consequence was that congress cracked down on lead pollution, Asarco was eventually closed and children's IQ rose an average of 6 points. Dr. Landigran hopes his study will shed light on how chemicals effect early childhood development. In an interview given to the Daily Green he stated,
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| Autism specialist added at Mercy Children's Hospital - WTVG Posted: 22 Apr 2010 09:43 AM PDT  Newsletters, Alerts, and RSS Sign up for our newsletters to get news, weather and other alerts via email. Get breaking news alerts on your desktop With our RSS feeds, get real-time updates of 13abc.com using your favorite news reader. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Grandparents Often Help Support Kids With Autism - WBUR Posted: 22 Apr 2010 12:57 PM PDT Having a child with autism can turn parents' lives upside down. But it can also profoundly affect the lives of grandparents, according to an online survey by the Interactive Autism Network (IAN). Preliminary results from the survey of 2,600 grandparents found that many of them responded to a grandchild's diagnosis by changing everything from where they lived to how they spent their retirement savings. Involvement Starts Early "Grandparents are very involved," says Paul Law, who directs IAN and the medical informatics department at Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore. And that involvement starts early, according to the survey. It found that 30 percent of grandparents reported being the first to notice a problem with their grandchild's development. That's not surprising, Law says, because "grandparents have had the luxury of seeing their own children grow up. They know what normal development looks like." Grandparents Offer Financial, Emotional Support Once a child is diagnosed, many grandparents take action, the survey found. Fourteen percent said they and their grandchild's family had moved closer to each other in order to take better care of a child with autism. Seven percent said they actually combined households. There are lots of reasons for these moves, says Connie Anderson, IAN's online community facilitator. "It might be that (the grandparents) lived in a better school district," Anderson says. "It might be that they were going to be the primary babysitter." Many grandparents also provided financial support, with 57 percent saying they contributed money every month for autism-related expenses. Anderson says one grandfather commented, "We are paying for services that aren't covered by health insurance. We have spent our retirement and we would do it again." Grandparents who took the survey offered a lot of comments like that, Anderson says. Carol Cutler of Little Elm, Texas, is one of those grandparents. She says she has one grandson who is almost five who has been diagnosed with autism. And his 2-year-old brother is showing early signs of the disorder. 'Nothing More Precious In Your Life' "I love them so much," Cutler says. "There's just a tender spot in my heart as I see them struggle with the things that parents of neurologically normal children take for granted." Like many grandparents who took the survey, Cutler is concerned not only about her grandchildren, but about her daughter, who spends much of her day taking them to occupational therapy, physical therapy and speech therapy. "She is sleep deprived. She is stressed," Cutler says. "These children have medical issues that need to be addressed." So Cutler, who works full time as a labor and delivery nurse, says she frequently makes the one-hour drive from her house to her daughter's house to help out. The previous day, she says, she met her daughter and grandsons at the pediatrician. "They're a little hyperactive, so it's kind of a handful," she says. Cutler also invites her grandchildren to stay with her sometimes in order to give her daughter and son-in-law a break. It's not surprising that the survey found that many other grandparents also make sacrifices, Cutler says. "There is just nothing more precious in your life than your grandchildren," she says. Related Links Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Autism and Help - Associated Content Posted: 22 Apr 2010 07:13 AM PDT OK, so you have had a child with autism or somewhere on the spectrum, and you have managed pretty well, now your child is no longer a child. I am not sure what it is like else where in the world but here in Canada, there is not a lot of help available for the adult with autism. You can find all the funding needed when your child was little but not any longer. So what do you do? Well you can do a couple things, ok there is probably a lot more but here is 2 things you can do. How do you do that, you ask? Well it is not as hard as it sounds, really it isn't. I have been looking after a lady for the last 14 years, full time, 24/7 and she is on the low functioning side of the scale. Meaning she is non verbal, does not make eye contact, and thank goodness is toilet trained now. She also has numerous other medical conditions, I moved to a new town, and that is where things changed for the better for her and me as well. We met some wonderful people through an office in our town called the Resource Center, and they were able to help me get paid to look after her.. The first thing you will want to do is to go on the internet and look up microboards. Here is the web site for the one in B.C., http://www.microboard.org/ These people are wonderful and very helpful, they have so much information to offer and support as well.. These people changed my life as well as hers for the better.. Here is a link for some information for people in the U.S. I am not sure how this one works so please go to the link, email or phone the people and get some information.. I hope this information will help some people out there, I will be publishing more articles about autism and life with some one with autism.. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
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