Rainfall and autism connection?
Mood:  cool
Topic: Autism Info
November 4, 2008

Autism news

This is a summary of information that came to my attention as a headline in my Comcast.net email account. Apparently, researchers correlated the incidence of autism with the amount of rainfall in California, Oregon and Washington states and found that autism rates were positively related to the amount of precipitation these states received from 1987 through 2001. The authors, Michael Waldman of Cornell and colleagues got autism rates from these three states and their counties and plotted them against daily precipitation. This article was reported in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Is this another junk study? Is there a comparison of other states and other rainfalls? Is this just a statistical relationship having nothing to do with cause and effect? Until I see the full study, I’ll have to reserve judgment.

Susan