this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026
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People have been burning wood since time immemorial. Every single day, for cooking. I have an extreme amount of skepticism for this link. If it’s not entirely spurious, I would expect the smoke being an indirect factor, such as the proximity of a wildfire causing elevated stress hormones in the mother at a key point in the fetus’ development.
True and many millions die from it every year, most air pollution deaths are from woodsmoke, when we did it 10,000 years ago on the veld a fire was small and isolated and well ventilated,
FF to modernty, climate change enhanced wildfire, billions of acres going up and a population of 9 billion, might be a concentration issue?
The link between wood burning and lung disease is well documented, as is the decline in lung disease as households moved to other forms of heating.
What wasn’t documented, was a corresponding decline in autism. Instead, it seems to have been so rare historically as to not be identified. Perhaps it is possible people in the past were more tolerant of neurodivergence, or more aggressively beat it out of children, or everyone was autistic due to all the wood smoke everywhere, but none of those seem like very likely explanations.
People definitely tried to beat neurodivergence out of people. It doesn’t work, but it does make people mask more, which is a win for the kinds of people who beat children for being different
Autism isn't a new phenomenon, so I'm not sure why any of this would matter
The story says "wood smoke" but then they talk about Southern California wildfires, which typically contain a lot of other toxic materials from burning houses, other buildings, vehicles, power and telephone lines, etc. especially the fires burning in proximity to pregnant women.
Bro, last year Altadena was completely and utterly destroyed. Tens of thousands of people's houses burnt down.
It's getting worse every year with climate change
In 2025 the Los Angeles wildfires burned more than 16,000 homes and other buildings. And about 6,300 cars.
An outlier yes, but many of the wildfires do burn a significant number of structures, that's the main reason firefighters engage with them. The purely chaparral fires (which may be allowed to burn) are more distant from most pregnant women so even though the smoke blows over it's less concentrated.
Or modern forests are filled with chemicals that get airborne?
Perhaps you haven't looked at wildfires ? , houses sheds and barns full of plastic, paints and farm chemicals, fields full of plastic used for weed suppression, vehicles and their tyres ignite and burn, including the metals etc
Then the aftermath is that toxic shit going into water supplies next time it rains
The forever chemicals and plastics that now permeate the ecosphere?