In November of 2008, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a web site listing thousands of common household items that contain mercury, including popular infant toys, digital cameras, watches, DVD players and camcorders.

Acknowledging the danger of mercury, both for the individual handling the product and the greater environmental toxic load, the EPA site recommends the use of mercury-free alternatives.

"The optimal way of preventing exposure to elemental mercury is to reduce the use of mercury-containing products by using alternatives whenever possible. In most cases, non-mercury alternatives exist for mercury-containing products," the web site states.

While the EPA falls short of banning mercury containing products, it provides consumers information to keep safe and do their part to decrease the overall mercury contamination of the environment. SafeMinds applauds this edict and hopes that the next logical step will be taken with a federal mandate for the use of mercury-free alternatives.

One extremely common item on the EPA's website is button-cell batteries, coin-shaped batteries that provide power to thousands of portable electronic devices, including hundreds of children's toys. Mercury from these batteries can be released to the environment during various stages of the product life cycle, but primarily during manufacturing and disposal. Because they are unregulated at a state or federal level, toys and devices containing these batteries do not have to be labeled. It is legal to dispose of them in the household trash; and they rarely are collected for recycling. Because button batteries are not targeted for recycling, almost all of this mercury presumably ends up in the municipal solid waste stream where it is either incinerated or land filled.

Toys that contain these mercury-containing batteries include "Teethable Tunes" and "Giggle Teethers," music-making teethers designed for infants to chew on. Other products include Panasonic DVD players, JVC digital cameras and Swatch watches.

Other mercury containing products flagged on the EPA's website include dental amalgams, fish, fluorescent light bulbs, thermometers and vaccines. For a complete listing, please visit the site at www.epa.gov/mercury.

Two new reports announced last week call into question the safety of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) decade's old policy of routinely administering multiple vaccines concurrently.

Mitochondrial Disease in Autism Spectrum Disorder Patients, published last week in PLOS One by investigators from the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins Kennedy Krieger Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital concluded that disturbance in mitochondria (energy production cells) is an underlying mechanism in a subset of individuals with autism. "There might be no difference between the inflammatory or catabolic stress of vaccinations and that of common childhood diseases" they said, and "large, population-based studies will be needed to identify a possible relationship of vaccination with autistic regression in persons with mitochondrial cytopathies."

In a November 26th response to Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney concerning adverse vaccine events, Colonel Renata Engler of the DOD Vaccine Healthcare Center commented on their collaboration with the CDC, "We have preliminary findings from one of our many on-going research studies that suggest a relationship between adverse events and multiple vaccinations exist." She added, "The recommendation for more research on subpopulation risk factors in relation to multiple vaccine combinations has been included in the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Report on Multiple Vaccines."

Regarding findings by Elliott and colleagues in August, the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation stated that mitochondrial disorder is likely to be at the core of many health conditions including autism. These latest findings provide additional evidence that the link between autism and mitochondrial disorders is not 'rare,' as government officials characterized it after the Poling family was recently compensated for their daughter's vaccine injury.

SafeMinds Vice President Lyn Redwood stated, "Research clearly demonstrates that mercury in vaccines causes mitochondrial damage, yet mercury-containing vaccines continue to be administered to infants and pregnant women despite the IOM's recommendation that these populations not be exposed." SafeMinds believes the government should initiate a comprehensive study of vaccinated/unvaccinated populations examining all health outcomes, vaccine components and synergistic interactions.

Environmental mercury exposure has also been linked to mental retardation, Attention Deficit Disorder and autism. SafeMinds President Theresa Wrangham added, "Mercury in all forms is neurotoxic and is increasingly impacting public health. Congressional action is needed to shift industry from its use in medicine, utilities and consumer products."

Reprinted from Mothering magazine website (will be featured in March/April print issue).

Twelve years ago, tears stained my face as my husband and I were told that our eldest daughter, Rachel, had autistic tendencies that would require further diagnostic investigation. Six months later, Rachel was diagnosed on the autism spectrum as PDD/NOS, or in layperson's terms, mildly autistic. Even so, she would face significant challenges in everyday life requiring treatment to mediate the long-term effects of this disorder. Early medical advice about treatment focused on core features of autism's deficits in language delay, social skills, relationship development delays, and reasoning capacity. Years later, we would discover the value and cost of the biomedical treatments that have jump started her more recent improvements.

When Rachel was diagnosed, I was a stay-at-home mom and my husband Scott had a good job with good health insurance coverage, or so we thought. It quickly became apparent that insurance would not cover the recognized treatments that Rachel needed to improve and certainly not off-label biomedical treatments we have used with success. We were a middle-class family with assets; we were told that we didn't qualify for services to assist us in meeting the financial burdens of treatment. If we could not find a means to fund treatment and education now and in the future for Rachel, our family faced a financial downhill slide to disaster. Autism was now the predator stalking our family and threatening Rachel's potential, our hopes for retirement, and college opportunities for both our children.

Scott, having previously worked on Alaska's North Slope in the petroleum field, quickly sub-contracted for a position in Alaska. For more than half a year, Scott worked a two-week-on and two-week-off schedule in Alaska's Arctic Circle to cover treatment costs and allow us financial stability. From then to now, we continue to pay normal business expenses and all therapy costs not covered by insurance. Our family's direct and indirect expenses for Rachel's treatment last year was approximately $45,000. The story for many families facing this all too common financial scenario is anything but rosy, with many unable to meet the financial obligations that autism treatment entails.

In fact, studies published by Harvard University found societal costs for caring and treating individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in the US to be $35+ billion per year. Direct costs per ASD individual include direct medical costs and behavioral therapies and are estimated to be $29,000-43,000 per year. Annual indirect costs include direct non-medical costs, such as special education, camps, child care, lost income, income differentials, and alternative/off-label therapies. These indirect costs to the individual and/or family are estimated to range from $39,000 to nearly $130,000 (Michael Ganz, Understanding Autism: From Basic Neuroscience to Treatment, (city, state: CRC Press, 2006)). Also of interest, the American Medical News reported the medical loss ratios of the largest for-profit insurers and found that profits for the biggest health care providers continued to rise, while the amounts these providers spent on care declined. Unsurprisingly, 50 percent of US bankruptcies are attributable to illness, or medical bills, indicating that the ASD community is not alone in their struggle for health care and treatment (Steffie Woolhandler, "Illness and Injury as Contributors to Bankruptcy," Health Affairs (2005).

SafeMinds is a volunteer-driven organization and we are currently looking for additional people to help meet our goals.

We are looking for volunteers to help with the following activities:

• Writers who can help analyze studies and help draft articles for the SafeMinds website and newsletter.
• Clerical and data entry support to assist our environmental committee.
• Fundraising volunteers who can help with current initiatives or do their own fundraising on behalf of SafeMinds.

Please contact us if you are interested in helping.

The Age of Autism is the nation's first daily Web newspaper for the environmental-biomedical community - those who believe autism is an environmentally induced illness, that it is treatable, and that children can recover. For the most part, the major media in the United States aren't interested in that point of view, they won't investigate the causes and possible biomedical treatments of autism independently, and they don't listen to the most important voices - those of the parents. Visit the website at www.ageofautism.com.