What have television, bad weather and autism got to do with one another? Quite a lot, according to new research led by Michael Waldman of the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. The incidence of autism has grown tenfold over the past 30 years, from one in 2500 children to one in 166 children in the United States -- with similar levels elsewhere. Apart from general agreement that both genetics and environment play a part in the condition, very little is known about what causes it.
One smoking gun is the growing amount of television and related media watched by very young children, due to the growth of cable TV, VCRs and DVDs in the last few decades. Waldman and colleagues figured the highest rates of TV watching would occur in places where there was more rain and/or snow, and these places would have higher rates of autism. Analysis of data for three states -- California, Oregon and Washington -- showed autism rates were positively linked to levels of precipitation. And data from California and Pennsylvania showed a link between autism and the percentage of households subscribed to cable to TV.
"Our precipitation tests indicate that just under forty per cent of autism diagnoses in the three states studied is the result of television watching due to precipitation, while our cable tests indicate that approximately seventeen per cent of the growth of autism in California and Pennsylvania during the 1970s and 1980s is due to the growth of cable television," they conclude. The researchers also point out their findings are consistent with concern in the medical community about the exposure of young children to electronic media.
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