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Autism spectrum disorder prevalence and associations with air concentrations of lead, mercury, and arsenic

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Abstract

Lead, mercury, and arsenic are neurotoxicants with known effects on neurodevelopment. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder apparent by early childhood. Using data on 4486 children with ASD residing in 2489 census tracts in five sites of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network, we used multi-level negative binomial models to investigate if ambient lead, mercury, and arsenic concentrations, as measured by the US Environmental Protection Agency National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment (EPA-NATA), were associated with ASD prevalence. In unadjusted analyses, ambient metal concentrations were negatively associated with ASD prevalence. After adjusting for confounding factors, tracts with air concentrations of lead in the highest quartile had significantly higher ASD prevalence than tracts with lead concentrations in the lowest quartile (prevalence ratio (PR) = 1.36; 95 '% CI: 1.18, 1.57). In addition, tracts with mercury concentrations above the 75th percentile (>1.7 ng/m3) and arsenic concentrations below the 75th percentile (≤0.13 ng/m3) had a significantly higher ASD prevalence (adjusted RR = 1.20; 95 % CI: 1.03, 1.40) compared to tracts with arsenic, lead, and mercury concentrations below the 75th percentile. Our results suggest a possible association between ambient lead concentrations and ASD prevalence and demonstrate that exposure to multiple metals may have synergistic effects on ASD prevalence.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the assistance of the National Center of Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities of the CDC, especially the guidance provided by Jon Baio and Lin Hui Tian. We also acknowledge the support and resources provided by the Biostatistics/Epidemiology/Research Design (BERD) component of the Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences (CCTS) for this project. CCTS is mainly funded by the NIH Centers for Translational Science Award (NIH CTSA) grant (UL1 RR024148), and its renewal (UL1 TR000371) awarded to the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston by the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), awarded to University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NCRR, NCATS, or the CDC.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biostatistics/Epidemiology/Research Design (BERD) Core, Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences (CCTS), University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, 6410 Fannin Street, UT Professional Building Suite 1100.05, Houston, TX, 77030, USA

    Aisha S. Dickerson & Mohammad H. Rahbar

  2. Division of Clinical and Translational Sciences, Department of Internal Medicine, McGovern Medical School The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX, 77030, USA

    Mohammad H. Rahbar

  3. Division of Epidemiology, Human Genetics, and Environmental Sciences (EHGES), University of Texas School of Public Health at Houston, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX, 77030, USA

    Mohammad H. Rahbar & Inkyu Han

  4. Division of Child Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, UT, 84108, USA

    Amanda V. Bakian & Deborah A. Bilder

  5. Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, 21205, USA

    Rebecca A. Harrington

  6. Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA

    Sydney Pettygrove

  7. Department of Community and Family Health, College of Public Health, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, 33612, USA

    Russell S. Kirby

  8. Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, WI, 53726, USA

    Maureen S. Durkin

  9. Division of Biostatistics, University of Texas School of Public Health at Houston, Houston, TX, 77030, USA

    Lemuel A. Moyé III

  10. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Texas Medical School, Houston, TX, 77054, USA

    Deborah A. Pearson

  11. Department of Health Care Organization and Policy, School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, 35205, USA

    Martha Slay Wingate

  12. Department of Pediatrics, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ, 07103, USA

    Walter M. Zahorodny

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  1. Aisha S. Dickerson
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Correspondence to Aisha S. Dickerson.

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Dickerson, A.S., Rahbar, M.H., Bakian, A.V. et al. Autism spectrum disorder prevalence and associations with air concentrations of lead, mercury, and arsenic. Environ Monit Assess 188, 407 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-016-5405-1

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