Who Is Dan Olmsted?

Question: Who Is Dan Olmsted?

Who is Dan Olmsted, and what role does he play in the autism community?

Answer: Dan Olmsted is best known as an investigative reporter authoring The Age of Autism series for United Press International. From January 2005 through July 2007, Olmsted wrote about his investigative findings concerning the possibility that autism's incidence rate has risen throughout the United States and elsewhere due to environmental factors.

Currently, Dan is managing editor for the increasingly popular blog Age of Autism, providing a forum for parents and professionals with concerns and information on the link between mercury and autism. Dan is also co-authoring a book tentatively titled Mercury Rising — the Truth About our Global Mental Health Emergency on the natural history of mercury poisoning and its hidden role in the rise of a number of serious disorders, most recently autism, that have plagued the western world for the past half-millennium. It is to be published by Thomas Dunne Books, a division of St. Martin's Press, in 2010.

He is a graduate of Yale College, an original staff member and former national editor of USA Today, a former Washington Bureau Chief and Investigations Editor for UPI and he (with Mark Benjamin) won the National Mental Health Association award for best wire service reporting for an investigative series on deadly side effects of an antimalaria drug. He lives in Falls Church, Va.

_Source:

Interview with Dan Olsted, September 2008.