One common plastic ingredient may affect children before they’re born

Researchers analyzing 847 children in Australia's Barwon Infant Study found that prenatal exposure to the plasticizer DEHP correlates with specific DNA methylation patterns in umbilical cord blood, patterns tied to genes involved in attention, social behavior and emotional processing. Those children showed higher levels of autism- and ADHD-related symptoms by ages 2 and 4, according to the study published in Med.

The lead author, Professor Anne-Louise Ponsonby of the Florey Institute, called autism a complex multifactorial condition and said understanding environmental drivers could help address symptom severity. An outside expert, Professor Mirko Uljarevic, praised the study's methodology but stressed the effects were modest, the work observational rather than experimental, and the validation datasets small, with some epigenetic signals even pointing in opposite directions between blood and brain tissue.

Ponsonby argued regulators and industry should apply more caution when introducing widely used chemicals, though the researchers themselves acknowledge they measured symptoms, not diagnoses, and cannot prove cause and effect.

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