“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.
@ Delphi – We have average temperature records and atmospheric carbon info dating back hundreds of thousands of years via Arctic and Antarctic ice core samples. Natural planetary cycles are on much shorter time-spans (around 10,000 years or so). At no time during the last half million years have atmospheric carbon concentrations been anywhere near as high as they are now, nor risen as rapidly as they have in the last two centuries. During the last half million years, we know of a number of significant volcanic eruptions, yet they all failed to raise carbon concentrations at anywhere near the rate of the rise since the industrial revolution.
The evidence is really very clear and incontrovertible. We really do know that global warming is real and that human activity is responsible for it.
You can expect to see special interest groups continue to spread their FUD about global warming, just as the tobacco industry did for decades about the effects of smoking. But the jury is already in and a verdict rendered, no matter what lies are told to the contrary.
“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.”
Okay, and right after they read that, they can read the risks involved if their children contract polio, meningitis, tetanus, and all the other diseases that the vaccines prevent.
“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.”
Really? Wow, I didn’t know that the Amish are exactly like everyone else except they don’t vaccinate. That’s ridiculous; in fact, they do not use any of the high-tech devices mentioned in this article. So the Amish are a particularly bad example to use for your argument.
Gee, I guess they must be using extra vaccine in Silicon Valley. Why else the huge rise in autism there compared to everywhere else?
A person who refuses to vaccinate a child in fear of autism is as much an idiot as the one who refuses to vaccinate a child from cervical cancer in fear that she will suddenly become a huge slut.
In light of this crisis, I am forming a company to gather all the toxic iPods and other high-tech devices. Just mail your electronic equipment to me, and I will process them at no charge to you. If you would like to donate to support this endeavor, I will also be setting up a PayPal account for that soon. Do it for our children!
Unrelated to my above post, does anyone have any tips on successfully running a store on eBay?
Heavy metals cause autism. Mercury is the biggest offender. Mercury is in children’s tooth fillings.
Mercury is also very prevalent in lakes and streams. It gets concentrated, through the food chain, in the fish we eat. It gets into the environment from pulp and paper mills. The biggest users of paper are newspapers.
The newspaper behind this story is way more responsible for autism in children than Apple’s iPod ever will be.
Ironic, isn’t it.
‘Think of iPod batteries, computers, television sets and mobile phones – thousands of them tossed aside’..
Who tosses iPods!?!? Not me
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” /> we have a waiting list of family members who are eager and anxious to get our old ones when we update
rasterbator you assume too much. Not everyone goes to see an Al Gore movie or Michael Moore film and knee-jerks into a response.
I find it funny how much you felt like you needed to write to refute what I wrote. Perhaps turning of Fox News and going out and talking to actual people would be a good idea.
YIKES!!
Do some research people. UCLA and others have proven that there is no causal link between the mercury in vaccines and increased autism rates. (Much of the increase in autism is actually caused by a greater tendency to diagnose and label it. My wife works with autistic children.) There is a FAR greater health risk to families when they do not vaccinate than there is from the vaccine itself. The past few years has seen a rise in childhood diseases due to parents believing this bunk and not getting their children vaccinated.
Re: Global Warming. The jury is still out. (However, it is scientific and political suicide to deny it.) The biggest problem is that we tend to believe that life and the environment is constant. And that change is abnormal. Thus, if there is change there must be a cause. Various interest groups find it convenient to blame greenhouse gases regardless of the data. Like high heavy metal levels in autistic children (it may be there but is it causal?), discovering true cause and effect is hard to determine.
the other mark : sums up exactly what I think on both of these subjects. Does anyone so fervantly believing in man-made GW realize that just 20 years ago, a large portion of the scientific community were as concerned abot the coming Ice Age (I’m NOT kidding-Ice Age) as certain sectors are about GW now? Newsweek Magazine almost had a stroke over it.
And by the way, contrary to Q’s comment, i’m a member of the Democratic Party. GW is real-it’s the so-called ” incontrovertible” man-made part that gives me heartburn. It might be the ONLY Republican position I agree with. Oh, besides getting rid of the Inheritance tax.
It must be George Bush’s fault. Wait Al Gore is the one on Apple’s board!
“the evidence that global warming is man-made is incontrovertible”
Incontrovertible seems questionable in the case of GW http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/harris061206.htm
“Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, “There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth’s temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years.” Patterson asked the committee, “On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century’s modest warming?”
Jay,
Republicans have a lot more to offer than the two items you just listed. The democrats are ready surrender for Isreal right now. I want to know how do you negotiate with lunatics that’s whole purpose to exist is to wipe you off the face of the earth. They want to get rid of Isreal first then the West. The same crap spewed from Democrats is what went on with Hitler. Europe trying to appease him. Look how well that worked.
Burn baby burn! – Disco inferno!
Burn baby burn! – Burn that mother down, yoh!
Burn baby burn! – Disco inferno!
Burn baby burn! – Burn that mother down
Burnin’!
Unfortunately, the inability to understand the rest of the world, and therefore rationally deal with the rest of the world, particularly those parts of the world with different cultures, is not confined to the Republicans. I don’t suggest for a minute any Democrat has the answers to the Mideast or terrorism situations. I’m not that partisan. The problem is that as Americans we simply can not, or will not, accept the possibility that the US doesn’t have all the answers, or
r that our system of government and beliefs is right for everyone. It’s just at the moment we have a administration with way too much hubris, and belief that the “American Way” is the only way and it’s just the ignorant dumb ass “fureners” that don’t get it.
I’m not sure we’d be in any different circumstances with a Democrat in the White House. ( I think you can see I’m cynical). It’s not that I dislike Republicans; I don’t care for politicians. And I’m pro-Isreal. What’s going on now is about getting rid of Hamas not getting hostages back, but I think they’ve gone too far. But I don’t go to bed at night worrying about bombers or rockets either.
As far as the negotiating goes, and depending on your persuation, I don’t think we can negotiate or kill them fast enough to make a difference one way or the other. Radical Islamic beliefs are too strong for either to work. We are trying to change the strongest belief system in the world in the Middle East and that it flat is not going to happen. The North Vietnamese stated that they would been willing to sacrifice everyone in North Vietnam if that’s what it took to get the US out of there. There is no simple, political sound bite answer to fantacism.
Lumping iPods in with mercury’s effects on autism is completely unfounded in science. Regular uh-rechargeable batteries (9-volt, AAA, AA, C, and D) are technically known as magnanese-dioxide/zinc but are more commonly known as “carbon/zinc” batteries. Still, they contain a little bit of mercury (they used to contain more). Old watch and hearing aid batteries can still be purchased that are flat-out based on mercury (bad for the environment). But the iPod’s use a lithium-based chemistry and to my knowledge, there isn’t even a smidgin of mercury in those.
What there IS though in most consumer electronics is solder and usually (but not always) solders contain lead. It is possible to use non-lead solders and it is possible the iPod might even have these in their construction. But I haven’t seen lead linked to autism—just mercury. And that’s a big deal because a mercury compound had been used in the past as a preservative for vaccines for infants.
Anyway, to my thinking, iPod ≠ autism.
P.S. Funny, my “MDN Magic Word” was “truth.”
Nobody throws away iPods – they live forever on eBay. I have 2 old iPods – still working fine but not as cool as my Nano so I don’t use them. Am I going to toss them in the trash? No!
Small point:
LCD monitors contain very small amounts of mercury used in the backlight inverters to illuminate the panels. Supposedly these amounts are so low that they are not hazardous to the “user”. Get enough of ’em in a landfill and………………. Why can’t toxic substances just be our friends? Will they negotiate?
I seriously doubt that iPods are more to blame than cell phones or computers when it comes to environmental pollution. Even if iPod is a generic term, they still pale when compared to cell phones and computers. Geez.
The only people who think that GW evidence is settled, incontrovertible, or otherwise settled beyond all reasonable doubt are not scientists. Real scientists cannot be absolutists, because all of the data is never in. This leaves the “GW as religion” to people who are busy pushing the cause-de-jour because they want to boss others around and find themselves empty inside. Go talk to China, India, and Brazil, guys. Then when you’ve fixed the real polluters, talk to the U.S, Britian, France and the rest of the West.
Americans have to be one of the most guilt-ridden people in the world.
The egotistical belief that everything is “our” fault (guilt) leads us directly to us feeling responsible for every world complaint or problem. Thus, trying to solve global warming, problems in Iraq/Iran etc.
And for those who don’t remember (the Bush-bashers) don’t forget Clinton brought us the Serbian conflict and Somalia. In the former, our reluctance to react quickly resulted in massive loss of life. Now, I’m not trying to say that GWB is doing great. It’s just that it is much easier to be a Monday Morning Quarterback than it is to make difficult decisions on limited information. And being President, regardless of political affiliation, is an extremely difficult job.
As a poster of Respectful Insolence comments, iPod batteries use Lithium-ion technology, they wouldn’t work if they contained mercury. So they can hardly contribute that particular heavy metal to the environment.
Professor Lathe quality of research is less than impressive.