Current Event The article “Offspring autism risk linked to pesticide exposure during pregnancy” published on Medical News Today, revealed the association between pregnant women’s exposure to chemical environment and autism, a research conducted by the MIND Institute at the University of California-Davis. According to the article, expectant mothers who live close to farms that are applied to certain pesticides, have higher risk of having children with autism than the mothers who live far away from these fields with chemical pollution. Among the most commonly used commercial pesticides, each of them has different level of influence on children. Moreover, different pesticides affect children at different periods of time. The reason is because that pesticides are neurotoxic, which means they are harmful for brain development, especially when the brain’s neurotransmitters are developing to operate the function of mood, learning, social interactions and behavior. When these functions are damaged during the process of development, the corresponding disorder may appear as symptom of autism. However, it is possible to reduce children’s risk of having autism if mothers consume appreciate vitamins and pay special attention to maternal nutrition. At the meantime, it is significant to avoid agricultural pesticides exposures during pregnancy. Finally, regarding this research, there are still some limitations that might affect the result (Whiteman). Compare the article that published on mass media with the original journal, the article summarized general information from original source and presented in an easier way for readers who do not have relevant academic background. The mass media indeed omitted some information, such as detailed methods they used for the research, and the specific data they analyzed. The mass media article put more emphasize on the results after their statistical analysis, which is more attracting than showing readers various numbers. The scholarly journal is a thorough report with every precise detail on the whole process of research, the process including giving clear introduction on what the autism and development delay are, identifying the most commonly used pesticides, picking up the participants who live close to commercial pesticides application sites, estimating the results by utilizing reliable data, and analyzing statistic received from questionnaires, finally they came out the result, and then discussed potential factors that might affect the result. Because the function of mass media article is more about giving general information to readers instead of reporting every step of the research to professionals in related fields, it is necessary for the article to omit some complicated data in order to make sense to different levels of audiences. I think this article is objective when restating the facts about autism and the results from research. Speaking of how I tracked down the original source, it was not difficult since the news article offered references at the bottom of webpage. When I decided to use autism as my topic, I searched “autism news” on the Internet, some related websites came out, I picked Medical News Today, and there were a lot of news reports about autism. Finally, I chose one that interested me the most. Autism is a neurodevelopment disorder with symptoms including deficient verbal and nonverbal communication, impaired social interactions and repetitive behavior at the age of 12 to 18 months. According to the research information conducted by NIH (National Institution of Health), the population that are at higher risk of being affected by autism include the following circumstances, “boys are four to five times more likely than girls to have autism”, older mothers and fathers have higher chance to have children with autism, “people with certain other developmental disorders”, and “siblings of those with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder)”. Currently, there is no clear evidence showing
