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
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