N.J. gets autism center

Saturday, November 17, 2001

By BOB GROVES
Staff Writer

PISCATAWAY -- New Jersey will have one of four new national research centers to study whether environmental toxins -- such as lead, mercury, and second-hand smoke -- cause autism and other neurological disorders in children, federal health officials announced Friday.

The new Center for Childhood Neurotoxicology and Exposure Assessment at Rutgers University here received a five-year, $5 million federal grant. The center will be run jointly by Rutgers and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

"We're witnessing an alarming increase in learning disability, attention deficit, and autism" in the United States, said Christine Todd Whitman, Environmental Protection Agency administrator and former governor of New Jersey.

"Children's health research is about prevention. That's really what our focus is," said Whitman, in announcing the federal grant at Rutgers' Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute, where the new center will be located.

Autism, a baffling life-long behavioral and developmental disorder, affects about 400,000 Americans, including one in every 500 children in New Jersey. Often it first appears in children between the ages of 18 months and 3 years. The cause of the disease is unknown, and there is no known cure.

Symptoms include communication problems, social withdrawal, short attention span, and hyperactivity. Experts have long suspected that some children are genetically predisposed to autism, but believe the disease may be triggered by environmental factors.

The EPA and the National Institute of Environmental Health Services have given $5 million grants to three similar centers in Ohio, California, and Illinois. They join eight other centers already established -- including two in the New York area, at Columbia University and the Mount Sinai Medical Center.

"We know there are important environmental components" to autism and other disorders, said Dr. Samuel Wilson, deputy director of the federal environmental health agency.

"But we don't have enough research to know how to intervene, or establish . . . disease conditions, or develop new drugs to fight new diseases," Wilson said.

Until recently, "children's environmental health has almost been an afterthought," said Dr. George Lambert, director of the new center. He said that study of the effects of toxins on children is especially important because the developing brains of children are "more susceptible" to adverse effects.

The new center will work cooperatively with advocacy groups such as the New Jersey Center for Outreach and Services for the Autism Community Inc., Lambert said.

Albert Anayati of Paramus said the center "is a dream come true."

"For so many years we have thought that something in the environment would cause autism," said Anayati, a member of the advocacy group New Jersey Cure Autism Now (CAN) and father of an autistic boy.

"It's a great step forward," said Sally Bernard of Summit, who is the mother of an autistic child and a member of CAN, which lobbied for the children's environmental health center.

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