EPA and Autism

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
NEWS
Region 2 NY, NJ, PR, VI
290 Broadway
New York, N.Y. 10007-1866

Rich Cahill (EPA Region 2) 212-637-3666
Martha Casey (EPA) 202-564-7842
Bill Grigg (NIEHS) 301-402-3378
Candace Botnick (EOHSI) 732-445-0206

New Children's Environmental Health Centers Announced by EPA and
NIEHS

FOR RELEASE: Thursday, October 25, 2001

(#01129) NEW YORK, N.Y. -- EPA Administrator Christie Whitman and
National
Institute of Environmental Health Sciences' Director, Dr. Kenneth Olden,
today announced four
new children's environmental health research centers that will focus on
childhood autism and
such behavioral problems as attention deficit disorder. Whitman and Olden
made the
announcement during a visit to Children's Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio.

"These new centers - and the eight already in existence across the
country - will continue
to perform and apply research that can help shed light on the links between
the environment and
the health of our children," said EPA Administrator Whitman. "They can
help us take children's
health protection to a new level, and I am proud to be working with NIEHS
and everyone at UC-
Davis, University of Illinois, Robert Wood Johnson, and this wonderful
Children's Hospital to
make it happen."

The new centers will receive $5 million, or about $1 million per
year for five years. EPA
and NIEHS, part of the federal National Institutes of Health and the
Department of Health and
Human Services, already fund eight children's environmental health research
centers.

Children's Hospital Medical Center of Cincinnati will work with
community participants
to assess the impact of reducing pollutants in the home and neighborhood on
children's hearing,
behavior and test scores. A center at the University of Illinois at
Champaign/Urbana will assess
the impact of exposure to mercury and PCBs among two groups of
Asian-Americans in
Wisconsin, whose diets are heavy in fish from the Great Lakes. At the
University of California
at Davis and the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School of the University of
Medicine and
Dentistry of New Jersey, researchers will study environmental factors that
may be related to
autism.

"These centers will help us understand whether environmental
factors play a role in the
progress of autism and other childhood disorders and illnesses," HHS
Secretary Tommy G.
Thompson said. "Ultimately the research conducted at these centers will
allow us to better target
our health and prevention efforts in order to do the most to improve the
lives of America's
children."

In jointly announcing the new center grants, NIEHS Director
Kenneth Olden, Ph.D. said,
"We all witness the miraculous development of newborns and young children
as they undergo
great physical and mental changes in just a few years. But sometimes a
child tragically loses, or
never attains, his or her ability to speak or interact socially. Other
times, a child's development
or concentration is impaired. We know that in some cases, lead exposure
has been the culprit, so
we as a nation have removed lead from paint and gasoline - and taken other
steps so that kids
today are testing smarter than youngsters a generation ago. But lead is
not the only potential
development toxin. We want to see what other environmental substances
might trigger
developmental problems - so that we can reduce the exposures and prevent
the damage."

The four new centers join eight already established (in 1998) at
the University of
Southern California in Los Angeles, the University of California at
Berkeley, the University of
Washington, the University of Iowa, the University of Michigan, at Ann
Arbor, the Johns
Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, Md., Columbia University, in New
York City, and the
Mount Sinai Medical Center, also in New York City, in partnership with
community groups in
East Harlem.

The following describes the research programs planned in Region
2:

ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON MEDICAL SCHOOL/UNIVERSITY OF MEDICINE
AND DENTISTRY OF NEW JERSEY - Under George Lambert as principal
investigator, this
Center for Childhood Neurotoxicology and Assessment will seek to determine
the possible
influence of mercury, lead and valproic acid, a drug commonly used to
control seizures, on
autism, learning disabilities and regression -- a situation in which
children who appear to be
developing normally start losing their language and social skills and lapse
into autism. Studies
will look at critical windows for brain development in the forebrain and
hindbrain and will
attempt to link exposures or disturbances at these times to subsequent
behavior. Researchers will
also look at children's variable genetic susceptibility to environmental
poisons. MRIs (magnetic
resonance imaging) will be used to see if children with higher exposures to
environmental
poisons have different patterns of brain growth and development.

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