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LONDON: Children who live in areas
which receive heavy rainfall are likely to develop autism, for a new study has
found a link between wet weather and the disorder.

An international
team has claimed that rainfall could be an “environmental trigger” which makes
already susceptible children develop the symptoms associated with autism,
ranging from severe problems to a mild need for routine.

Researchers, led by Cornell University, have based their findings
after looking at a group of children born in different parts of three American
states — California, Oregon and Washington — between 1987 and 1999, British
newspaper ‘The Daily Telegraph’ reported.

Subsequently, they
compared the annual rainfall that the children would have been exposed to in the
first two years of their life and found a link between higher levels of annual
precipitation and autism.

In fact, according to the researchers, the
rates of autism later diagnosed were positively related to the amount of
precipitation these counties received from 1987 to 2001.

“Similarly,
focusing on (counties within) Oregon and California, autism prevalence was
higher for (those children who) experienced relatively heavy precipitation when
they were younger than three years.

“As well as other explanations,
there is also the possibility that precipitation is more directly involved. For
example, there may be a chemical or chemicals in the upper atmosphere that are
transported to the surface by rainfall lead researcher Michael Waldman said.

The findings are published in the latest issue of the ‘Archives of
Paediatrics & Adolescent Medicine’ journal.