“The huge rise of autism in Britain is linked to old iPod batteries, mobile phones and other products of the electronic age, a leading scientist claimed this weekend,” The Express On Sunday reports via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge.
The Express On Sunday reports, “Autistic children have been shown to have problems getting rid of toxic metals – and those metals are increasingly polluting the environment, says Dr Richard Lathe. ‘Think of iPod batteries, computers, television sets and mobile phones – thousands of them tossed aside without any thought to their proper disposal,’ says the molecular biologist, who specialises in research into autism and other brain disorders.”
“In the wake of this week’s reports that autism has shot up to a record high of one per cent of the population, Dr Lathe is about to publish his own shock results from a study of hundreds of children in France,” The Express On Sunday reports. “More than half those who were autistic were found to have a marker of heavy metal in their urine, he says. ‘Couple this with a study published last month showing a correlation between mercury release into the environment and autism rates in Texas, and yet another study showing that autistic children have a problem getting rid of mercury through their hair, and you have a substantial body of evidence.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: In related news, a man tipped over while canoeing this past Saturday on the Hudson River. The man swam safely to shore, but the canoe sank and was lost. The man has been an Apple iPod owner since 2004.
Did you know that Apple rechargeable batteries actually provide a better solution for both your pocketbook and the planet? If your iPod were powered by 4-AA Alkaline batteries and you used just one pack per week (conservative estimate), after two years you would have spent over $200 and piled up 400 dead, potentially autism-causing batteries.
MacDailyNews Note: FYI for iPod Owners: Your one year warranty includes replacement coverage for a defective battery. You can extend your coverage to two years with AppleCare Protection Plan. During the second year, Apple will replace the battery if it drops below 50% of its original capacity. If it is out of warranty, Apple offers a battery replacement for $59, plus $6.95 shipping. Apple disposes your battery in an environmentally-friendly manner. More info here.
AG Pennypacker, a wealty industrialite links toxic PCs to insane blokes who write fud about Apple iPods and his equally whacked-out editor allows it.
macromancer – You can’t regulate volcanoes, one of the biggest causes of global warming, you CAN misdirect and regulate almost anything else, especially the public.
Ok I admit it: I’m an idiot.
macromancer:
Selective listening goes both ways since you believe there is actually global warming. The man who originally coined the phrase and wrote the paper on global warming over 30 years ago (and no, it wasn’t Al Gore as you probably have been told) has backed off that statement in recent years.
We are on this planet for such a small amount of time. How can anyone possibly predict this sort of stuff without being a meteorologist? Meteorologists today believe there is more of a chance of an ice age than there is a global warming issue. Studies have shown (don’t ask me for the data, please) that there is an ice age about every 10,000 years and that the last one was over 12,000 years ago.
Wow. Just because it mentions the word iPod, people jump to attack this study.
The headline here is incredibly misleading, MDN — misdisposal of electronic devices, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO IPODS, can’t be a healthy thing.
This just in:
Accordingly, autism has been
linked to the favoritism toward
socialism in th EU.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”tongue rolleye” style=”border:0;” />
Read this article: “Water’s Nice, But Not as Ice”
http://www.anxietycenter.com/warning/main.htm
I like the quote:
“Nature doesn’t care where you live or what you drive.”
Not too far from the truth, it is obvious that using Windows causes a decrease in intelligence.
Common municipal recommendation –
Battery Type: Alkaline
Common Name: Coppertop, Alkaline
Sizes Available: AAA, AA, C, D, 6V, 9V
Examples of Use: Flashlights, calculators, toys, clocks, smoke alarms, remote controls
Proper Disposal: Place in the trash
Materials which are not “heavy metals”:
– Lithium (as in Lithium-Ion)
– Nickel (as in Nickel-Metal-Hydride)
– the various metals used in the “hydride” part of NiMH
All these metals are toxic to some degree in large doses, but none of them suffer from the accumulation problem seen with mercury, cadmium, or lead.
Anyway, autism is usually hereditary and the increase in autism can be attributed to a pronounced increase in breeding among autistic individuals due to various sociological changes.
This was a stupid story about nothing except to try and blame the Apple iPod for something that is totally not controlled by Apple. If the UK is not evironmentally responsible the government should be blamed not Apple’s iPod. Whomever wrote this story was obviously an iPod hater trying to put out bad press about the obvious. It is not the iPod that is solely to blame for this as there are many portable devices that use batteries that would do the same, and have the same ill effects if not worse. I still have to 5gig original iPods with there orginal batteries that still work after 4 years of use. Versus those electronic items that use AA batteries which need to be replaced every two weeks or less. You tell me what creates more hazardous waste and I’ll tell you it is not the iPod by a mile!
How many canoes have to sink before you people come to your senses? Me, I prefer to be part of the solution instead of the problem. I only listen to vinyl.
It isn’t the iPods or other devices that are polluting the environment — it’s the morons who pitch them in the trash and think nothing of it. Get rid of your shit properly. Guns don’t cause autism, people who throw out iPods in the garbage cause autism.
Yeah, ‘cos there are so many more iPods than mobile phones. Mobile Phones are essentially disposable at this point.
I recently read a anti-GW article (Wall Street Journal?)that not only gave enough information to suggest that the “slam dunk” cause is man-made is not correct, but also stated that with our current level of technological ability to cut emissions and the realistic continuation use of the technology that PARTLY causes it(fossil fuel power plants, private autos, etc.), there is not enough money, desire, or technical ability to change whatever is going to happen anyway.
The real “inconvenient truth” is that Al Gore is wrong, particularly, when China and India are exempt from complying with Kyoto at all. Why do you think fuel and raw material prices have gone through the roof? Chinese and Indian econominc development with essentially no pollution controls at all.
Jake writes: “That is an EXTREMELY dangerous urban legend that has been investigated and debunked by several major studies. These were conducted by leading independent physicians and researchers. If you care about your children, get them vaccinated.”
“Debunked” only by the vaccine producers, not by unbiased scientific researchers.
While a link to autism may be circumstantial and unproved, it is beyond dispute that most vaccines contain mercury, that there is no safe level of mercury in the body, and that children are more susceptible to mercury toxicity because of their smaller body mass.
Vaccines also commonly contain formaldehyde and other toxins. We require that the foods we buy list their ingredients; surely we should require the same for something which bypasses the digestive tract and is injected directly into the body!
Vaccines are far from safe or risk free. They should have warning labels, just like cigarettes, and parents should be required to read and sign them before having their kids vaccinated. Parents are entitled to full disclosure; the risks of vaccines should be made known to them before their kids get jabbed.
The MDN take has to be one of the most stupid and insensitive I’ve ever seen.
– Fact: Batteries contain highly toxic chemicals
That’s about the only fact you need to know because one way or another those chemical will find there way into the human body and not everyone has as thick a skull as the MDN crew with which to shield themselves from these chemicals.
People who ridicule this kind of research do so because they don’t want to change their habits and look for ways to dismiss the threat.
“If iPods would just make kids unable to reproduce until they were 21 we’d have a really useful item.”
And if they did the Religious Right would be shreiking to have them outlawed because they would claim that they encourage promiscuity (as if any encouragement was needed!).
This is such bullshit. Autism is indeed strongly correllated to heavy metal pollution, however it is not caused by iPods (or any other music player for that matter). These players contain(ed) heavy metals, indeed. However it takes quite a long time for these to end up in the environment and in such concentrations to cause any damage. Furthermore, in order to devellop autism a child needs to be subjected to extreme doses in order to cause such defects. Unless you feed your batteries to a newborn, this is not going to happen. The real reason for this rise in toxic heavy metals in children (most notably mercury) is due to the fact that inoculations for a variety of deseases are heavily mercury based. In other words, we are poisoning our own children in the quest to rid the world of certain deseases. Some of these deseases are extremely dangerous, however the drug companies have yet to find the motivation or incentives to invent better vaccines. As such, when you think you are helping your children, you are in effect exposing them to the risk of autism.
“Childhood vaccines contain doses of mercury that are in excess of the Federal Safety Guidelines, and evidence shows a link between these excessive doses of mercury, found in thimerosal-containing vaccines, and neurodevelopment disorders such as autism and speech disorders, as well as heart disease, according to a study.”
One group that interestingly enough has not been hit by the increased rate of autism is the Amish. The difference between them and many other goups is that they generally do not vaccinate their children.
In other news, Bush caught on tape swearing during the closing lunch at the Group of Eight summit.
As his voice picked up by a microphone, Bush expressed his frustration with with his iPod that his playlists have not been updated. “See the irony is that what they [Bush assistants] need to do is get my music right and to stop doing this s— and it’s over,” Bush told Blair as he chewed on a buttered roll.
Jay – You talk like a Republican: ill informed and in denial.
Regardless of what Al Gore says (haven’t seen the movie nor heard his speech), the evidence that global warming is man-made is incontrovertible. There are lots of slick-talking oil hucksters out there still denying GW exists, or that we have caused it, just as the tobacco industry denied for decades that smoking caused cancer.
As for China and India, the US still emits more greenhouse gases than either of these. We should be setting an example for other nations, not leading the world into denial and inaction. There are signs, however, that China may yet become a green nation.
But you could be right about one thing: We may lack the collective will to do anything about it.
Global Warming may be a myth. Weather records don’t exist for anywhere near a long enough time span for which to be useful. This may just be a normal temp fluctuation. One volcano eruption emitted more “greenhouse gases” than every automobile ever driven.
We have evidence, but not enough data upon which to do more than guess.
Yes but Windows causes users to develop Tourets Syndrome!
Cheers,
Tim.
How long have iPods been around? 5 years? And they’re the cause of my friend’s son’s autism for 13 years? I don’t think so…
Yeah, environmental pollution (especially groundwater pollution) might be the cause of a lot of ills…but all that means is that we have to dispose of things in a smarter way than just to throw them in the trash. In California, cell phone stores now have to provide a box for folks to place their old phones when they upgrade; the phones are either converted to 911-only phones and given to women in abusive relationships, or they’re recycled. Why can’t electronic stores do something similar? Perhaps usable iPods can be converted into something useful for low-income folks or the disabled, like loading audio textbooks for visually impaired students (if Apple or someone could come up with some sort of audio cue so you know you’re accessing the right book, that would be cool), or dead iPods could just be recycled.
As for the global warming issue — sure, some of the current global warming might be a natural cycle, but it doesn’t mean we have to help it along by brainless activity…
iPods cause artism, not autism. Stoopid “journalists.”