DC, The Ground Zero For Autism?

There's an interesting article by Dan Olmstead called "The Age of Autism: Ground Zero" that talks about the Maryland suburban area outside of Washington, DC.   He writes about a government research center in Maryland where a father of one of the first autism children worked with an ethyl mercury compound to kill plants during the 1930s and 1940s.  Then, he mentions that the very first autistic child discovered by child psychiatrist Leo Kanner at Johns Hopkins University had a father who also worked with chemicals including ethyl mercury during that same time period in suburban Maryland.

The suburban Maryland towns of Greenbelt, Riverdale, College Park, and White Oak are all nearby this research center that is located in Beltsville.  Olmstead believes that the "Big Bang" for autism happened in this area because the first diagnosed children were living in that part of Maryland when Leo Kanner diagnosed them at Johns Hopkins.

I find this facinating reading because I grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland, just outside of DC.  My father was a dentist, now retired, who used mercury to fill cavities.  He went to the Dentistry School of Howard Univeristy in Washington, DC.  He graduated in 1950.  Btw, my mother went there too and met my father around the same time.  They married the same year he graduated.