Q: It seems as if the incidence of autism, ADHD, learning problems, and Alzheimer's disease are on the increase, while the number of industrial chemicals has also increased. Are chemicals causing this epidemic of neurobehavioral problems? What is Dow doing about it?

A: The rates of some neurobehavioral diseases in children and adults do appear to be increasing, while others have stayed the same or are decreasing. Scientists urge caution in interpreting any disease trends. Before concluding that such trends are real and investing in expensive research to determine the factors that may be causative, scientists must evaluate whether changes in diagnostic methods, disease classification or reporting practices might cause artificial changes in disease rates over time. Further investigation is especially important for diseases such as autism, for which the causes are still largely unknown. Dow supports efforts to strengthen and standardize health and environmental data collection efforts internationally so that trend data can be analyzed and used for further investigation, but we believe it is premature to link diseases such as autism and ADHD to chemicals without further rigorous scientific investigation.