When Steve Hicks, a physician and assistant professor of pediatrics at Penn State College of Medicine, looked at rates of autism diagnoses in eight ZIP codes where aerial spraying of pyrethroids, a common class of insecticides, happens in the summer months, and compared them with those in 16 surrounding ZIP codes where mosquito control is done primarily through pellets distributed on the ground, he and his team found a 25 percent higher rate of autism among the plane-sprayed group.
Overall, both rates are lower than the national average for autism, but Hicks says that could be due to the fact that his team relied on data from children who came through SUNY Upstate University Hospital, a regional medical center, potentially leaving out children who were diagnosed by their family doctors and never went to the regional center.
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