Mark Corrales, MPP Environmental Symposium: The Search for Environmental Risk Factors in Autism

The prevalence of diagnosed autism spectrum disorders (ASD) has continued to increase in recent years, along with dramatic growth in news coverage, books, and scientific articles about ASD. However, ASD still lags far behind cancer, for example, in terms of public awareness, research funding, and attention to the role of environmental factors, even relative to the prevalence and societal impacts of each disease. A small number of specific potential environmental risk factors have been examined in ASD, in hypothesis-driven studies. Discovery-based screening methods offer a complementary approach, in which hundreds or thousands of chemicals can be prioritized for closer examination, based on clues from genomics, toxicology, and the basic biology of ASD. Screening chemicals in this way suggests a modest number of pollutants that may deserve closer study, some of which have never been studied in the context of ASD.

Mark Corrales, MPP is an environmental policy analyst with over 20 years of experience assessing the health risks and economic impacts of air pollutants and regulations designed to limit air pollution. Mr. Corrales currently serves in the US Environmental Protection Agency's policy office, where he is the lead analyst reviewing major regulations focused on transportation-related emissions, as well as ambient air quality standards. Mr. Corrales also conducts research on emerging issues including the role of environmental factors in autism, risk analysis of sensitive subgroups, and environmental policy applications of bibliometrics, bioinformatics, and probabilistic uncertainty analysis. Prior to joining the EPA, Mr. Corrales managed a high-tech startup, following several years directing an environmental policy consulting practice in Washington, DC. His graduate degree is from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and his undergraduate degree in biology is from Harvard College. His many publications and presentations include "Environmental Genomics of Autism," with Martha Herbert, chapter in Autism Research, Oxford University Press, 2009.

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