Having an autistic child can sometimes feel like you're trying to solve ten different problems at once.

Maybe your child has difficulty communicating, but also doesn't sleep. Maybe there are digestive problems, extremely restricted eating, sensory sensitivities, anxiety, irritability, frequent illness, or other ongoing health concerns.

You may find yourself wondering:

Are all of these things just part of autism? Or could there be other health issues worth investigating?

That was a question we eventually had to ask ourselves. We learned that it was important to look at our child's health as a whole rather than treating every symptom as a completely separate problem.

When you're trying to understand your child's health, environmental exposures may be one piece of the puzzle you eventually start investigating. You may begin with questions about mercury, lead, pesticides, water, air quality, food, household chemicals, or other substances your child may have encountered.

You may also wonder:
Could an environmental exposure be affecting my child? How would I know? What should I actually investigate?

These are reasonable questions. Children can be particularly vulnerable to environmental contaminants because their bodies are still developing, and they have different patterns of exposure than adults. Research has also examined associations between various environmental pollutants and autism and other neurodevelopmental outcomes. That research does not mean that a particular exposure caused your child's autism, but it is one reason environmental health continues to be investigated.

For parents exploring a biomedical approach, environmental exposures can also lead to a much broader set of questions about heavy metals, nutrition, gut health, methylation, detoxification, and chelation.