Walker's opposition to new EPA smog standards will lead to more children with Autism.

Not only do Republicans want to roll back the new EPA standards that would reduce the particulate pollution contained in localized smog, but they want to get rid of the agency altogether. Yet they might want to rethink that position, since this same pollution is now tied to autism. Yea, right.

Until then, they intend to slow walk changes until they take control, when all of this will just magically goes away. Even if it means peoples lives will be at risk, including developing 3rd trimester fetuses.

Here's what we know about Wisconsin foot dragging:

Nearly five years after the federal government set new standards designed to protect public health from short, sharp spikes in air pollution levels, Wisconsin hasn't made the rules mandatory for all polluters. “The Department (DNR) has not met its statutory obligation to promulgate standards ... consistent with the federal standard,” the Midwest Environmental Defense Center and Clean Wisconsin said in their suit.

The lawsuit comes on the heels of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency “finding of failure” issued to the DNR in August for missing a 2012 deadline for new state rules on “incremental” increases in particles from smokestacks. Rewriting state rules ... should not have been complicated because it would require inserting new numbers into existing rules.

Now, new research has more than substantiated what was already assumed about particulate pollution and autism:

Pregnant women may nearly double their risk of giving birth to a child with autism by inhaling smog spewed by vehicles or smoke stacks, according to a new Harvard study that could help unlock the deepest autism mysteries … fortifies previous scientific findings that linked air pollution to autism. And it offers fresh insights by showing women in their third trimesters seem most vulnerable if they breathe in elevated levels of tiny airborne particles emitted by power plants, fires and automobiles said Marc Weisskopf, the report's senior author and associate professor of environmental and occupational epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. The higher the exposure rate, the greater the risk, he found.