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While pregnant with her son Edgar, Melissa Wolfe followed the lead of many a cautious woman before her. She took prenatal vitamins and ate organic vegetables. She avoided dyeing her hair and using hairspray. She even went as far as to leave the kitchen whenever someone turned on the microwave.

“I was very vigilant. Perhaps a little crazy,” said Wolfe, of Brentwood, N.H.

Yet Wolfe still fears that her 4-year-old’s autism may have resulted from chemicals infiltrating her womb, whether components of her migraine medicine, contaminants brought home from her husband’s work installing rubber flooring, or remnants of the remodeling the couple did on their house. 

The remodeling “created even more chemicals that I was breathing while pregnant,” she said. Wolfe also wonders if her father’s exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, which the government has now blamed for his prostate cancer, might be somehow connected to her son’s disability.