This sort of thing has probably happened a thousand times before but nobody noticed because they weren't looking.
The last time we supposedly had a big surge in autism cases, it was Silicon Valley. Con artists picked up on this and started the mass hysteria over thimerisol in vaccines. We had junk lawsuits flying all over the place and parents refusing to vaccinate their young children. Hysteria and a rush to judgment do not turn out well. Turned out to just be a place where borderline autistic people flocked.
I understand they have a highly rated special needs program there. Migration to go to this program will be part of the explanation.
At this point, the numbers themselves are meaningless. Far too many possible explanations. When they start working on a "WHY?" I'll start listening.
Things to look at before getting excited.
- Will they test the parents in a follow-up study? Probably not. That's something they didn't do in Silicone Valley either. High rates of autism in children should be coupled to high rates in parents but most parents of autistic children won't go there. There is any number of reasons why parents on the functional end of the spectrum might cluster together. If parents show autistic traits at far lower rates than children, then we get excited.
- Did they compare the rates between children born in Tom's River and children who moved there say a year or more after they were born and children who moved there at school age? A wealth of information is available here.
- I don't see a link to the actual study so I can't verify anything in the study. Had to dig just to find the abstract. Not going to pay $12 to get 12 hours of access to a taxpayer-funded paper and $50 to download. If you want to, it is at: Prevalence of autism spectrum disorder in a large, diverse metropolitan area: Variation by sociodemographic factors
Right now it is nothing more than "Hmmm. That's interesting. Wonder how they got that?"