UC Berkeley professor Patricia Buffler is looking for potential culprits for autism, a disease which affects 1 in every 150 children in the United States. Her research, however, is not geared towards genetics or the baby’s development in the mommy’s pregnant belly–for Buffler, it’s what’s on the outside that counts.

Buffler is checking out dust in air samples and keeping an inventory of household chemicals in search of a correlation between these and autism. Unfortunately for Californians, we seem to be setting up camp in one of their leading suspects.

Does this mean autism may be caused by airborne somethings or invading DNA mutators? It sounds like a microscopic alien horror movie. Creepy!

Image Source: skampy under Creative Commons
Researchers try to solve mystery of autism [InsideBayArea]