17 ms·

Study of falling sperm counts finds 'alarming' levels of chemicals in male urine

188 points by donsupreme 4y ago

whatthedangheck 4y ago
Also relevant: https://www.psypost.org/2022/06/study-finds-early-exposure-to-testosterone-predicts-gender-role-behaviors-in-boys-63250 https://www.psypost.org/2022/06/study-finds-early-exposure-t... > Low exposure to gonadal hormones during early gestation and infancy predicts higher recalled childhood gender nonconformity in men, according to new research published in Psychological Science. The findings provide evidence androgens such as testosterone play a role in the development of male-typical gender role behaviors in childhood.
- twoxproblematic 4y ago
- dehrmann 4y ago
  I know someone with a theory that the rise of "the pill" is a factor in male-typical gender role behaviors. Essentially, the pill is only 91% effective over a year in practice, the mother doesn't know she's pregnant, continues taking estrogen pills during the first trimester, and this impacts the development of the fetus. In the US, it wasn't really widely available to around 1970, so it lines up somewhat with increased rates of homosexuality. No idea if it's true, but the timeline and mechanism of action seem plausible. The rise of the pill also happened around a time of greater LGBT awareness, so overall awareness is also a factor.
  - Workaccount2 4y ago
    That might also fit with the fact that the youngest is usually the homosexual one. Mom started taking the pill to prevent anymore kids, but one slipped through.
  - whatthedangheck 4y ago
    It seems plausible. During the first section of this talk on transgender medical care Dr. Will Powers touches on exactly what you're talking about except in his example it was a highly potent estrogen prescribed to mothers who had had miscarriages to take during pregnancy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fefu33e8O-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fefu33e8O-0
  - zo1 4y ago
    If true, that sounds like something that should have worried and concerned those that "certified" those pills safe for human consumption.
  - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    The pill is probably responsible for a bunch of crap at the societal level just like any other group of hormone changing medications taken by such a wide chunk of the population would be. But it probably has little to do with homosexuality since we have good historical record of prevalence varying inversely with persecution.
    - annyeonghada 4y ago
      >prevalence varying inversely with persecution No, we don't because before we didn't even count. It is possible that 1. there were fewer homosexual men in the past 2. increase in the number of homosexual men is due to less persecution are both contemporarily true.
  - jjoonathan 4y ago
    That, and guys tend to medicate their hormones too these days (finasteride). Yes, DHT is "just" a parallel path -- but when is biology ever that cut and dry, especially when there's so much money to be made?
    - scythe 4y ago
      Does anyone actually start taking finasteride before the emergence of sexuality, though? As far as I'm aware, treatment is usually initiated at age 21 or later. In that case, changes in sexuality should be very hard to miss, and we'd know by now.
      - jjoonathan 4y ago
        Yeah, it's after puberty -- but are you so sure it would be hard to miss? Small effects with lots of confounding variables and an enormous profit incentive to miss seem easy to miss.
        scythe 4y ago
        In order to do due diligence for this reply, I typed "finasteride" into Google Scholar, and the first suggestion was "finasteride side effects", which brings up 20,500 results, including highly cited papers dealing specifically with sexual side effects: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1743609515337863 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S174360951... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1743609515335566 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S17436... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1557988314538445 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15579883145384... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0015028219325993 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001502821... I think that in that context, it would be hard to miss!
  - brightball 4y ago
    Oh, I've wondered about the societal effects of birth control pills for a couple of decades. Stuff like the above theory, effects on difficulty conceiving when women get off of it finally. Talk to a doctor sometime about the volume of 30+ year old women who are on some type of daily anxiety medication. My understanding is that it's approaching 50% or higher. Was that level of anxiety among women common before birth control? IMO there are a whole lot of questions that come from it.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      You spotted a social phenomena, but you have no reason to blame the borth control pill- it could bechemical pollution, tefllon, etc.
      - brightball 4y ago
        There’s certainly plausible reason to wonder about it. Consider how many women take it, for many many years. Many women go through multiple different types of pills due to the effects certain pills will have on their body, from weight gain to period frequency. You do that for 5, 10, 15…20 years…it’s reasonable to wonder what it will do longer term. At the same time, as you age and have older friend groups it’s hard not to notice a correlation between the friends you have who never took birth control or minimally took it who also have no anxiety issues and those that don’t. Maybe it could be something else but IMO it warrants further study.
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    As I once read, the contraceptive is not eliminated by the body, so it gets washed out by the kidneys and ends up via sewers in water everywhere. No idea how long-lived it is though. I guess it would break down naturally?
  - abeppu 4y ago
    > so it lines up somewhat with increased rates of homosexuality ... but isn't it really hard to distinguish _actual_ rates of homosexuality from visible homosexuality? As public acceptance for LGBT people has increased, more people can feel safe coming out or identifying as gay. Further, if the pill became widely available around 1970, and if this were an impactful factor, wouldn't you expect to see the corresponding change beginning in at least the mid 80s, as those kids grow up?
    - oneoff786 4y ago
      LGBT rates among zoomers is shockingly high to me. 20%, double that of millenials. Millenials are double that of Gen X. I tend to believe there’s a genuine biological phenomenon going on here. The next generation should be just starting to establish their sexual orientations. The data should be interesting…
      - concinds 4y ago
        The increase is almost entirely in bisexuality. I think the biological argument is strong.
      - staticman2 4y ago
        We have records showing male male sex was common in ancient Greece.
        oneoff786 4y ago
        Yeah, mostly rich older dudes fucking young boys. Greece was not some idyllic free love society. It was just that being a top was super manly and being a bottom was not. You didn’t have wealthy men in openly gay equal relationships with other men.
        Der_Einzige 4y ago
        Pretty sure poor people weren't being allowed into the most elite unit in the Greek world (since you had to buy your armor!) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Band_of_Thebes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Band_of_Thebes
  - nkrisc 4y ago
    You have to take "rates of homosexuality" with a huge amount of skepticism considering it was often illegal until recently and could even get you killed. You have to assume any data from the 70s or earlier is severely under-reported. Any research into the subject was also taboo, frowned upon, or even actively discouraged, or outright disallowed.
mistrial9 4y ago
Green Chemistry and the Body Burden publicity of 2000s.. "I told you so" only goes so far.. deeply troubling..
no_wizard 4y ago
I wonder if lower sex drive is also caused by this sort of thing? I'll admit, I don't think I've ever had a normal sex drive. My partner is very frustrated by this at times. Its not an attraction thing, I don't know the "why" per se here. I'd be interested to know if these things are correlated. I'd also be open to hearing about how to reverse it. (I'm 30 years old, supposedly I should be not this) Speaking in aggregates, there have also been reports[0] of this happening across the world, including pre-pandemic[1] [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/mar/16/not-tonight-darling-how-the-world-lost-its-libido-and-how-it-can-get-it-back https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/mar/16/not-ton... [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/29/share-americans-not-having-sex-has-reached-record-high/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/29/share-ame...
- fithisux 4y ago
  Me too having the same problem. Possibly plastic bottles?
  - pengaru 4y ago
    Fortunately you can literally measure a male's ango-genital distance to see if they're underdeveloped as has been observed from Bisphenol A exposure. I wonder if it's a check doctors are generally doing now.
    - fithisux 4y ago
      Mine did not even mention the case of pollutants. He said heart problems or psychological problems.
      - pengaru 4y ago
        Maybe they just measure testosterone levels and avoid the awkward conversation (and potentially depressing conclusion) of determining how fully developed you are from your time in the womb. Is there even much they can do about it other than TRT anyways?
- 4y ago
bobro 4y ago
what is this title? how does a falling sperm count find something?
- acbullen 4y ago
  I think the implication is 'Falling sperm counts [study] finds 'alarming' levels of chemicals in male urine'
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  If they are looking for sperm in urine I think I've found the problem.
  - davzie 4y ago
    Not for the old boys on Tamsulosin
- fguerraz 4y ago
  And reading the article, I see no link between sperm count and these chemicals.
- elicash 4y ago
  "Find" is being used here as a noun, not a verb.
- dang 4y ago
  The article's title exceeds 80 chars so the submitter had to shorten it. We've adjusted the wording now.
ParksNet 4y ago
We need to ban entire categories of chemicals, if they are ever going to be in contact with food or potable water, including at end of life: phthalates, bisphenols, PFAS. We also need to ban polyester clothing, at least for categories washed frequently: socks, tshirts, underwear. Polyester clothing is made from discarded plastic and inevitably degrades into microplastics inside your own house, bed, washing machine.
- scythe 4y ago
  >ban polyester clothing I'm sympathetic, but I'm afraid people don't realize just how incredibly difficult this would be. Polyethylene terephthalate, colloquially "polyester", has completely transformed the textile industry. You want mold-resistant carpets and kitchen towels? Polyester. Water-resistant lightweight warm clothes? Polyester. Ultra-light athletic clothes? Polyester. Bathing suits that don't chafe? Polyester. Durable, stain-resistant upholstery? Polyester. Fuzzy blankets? Polyester. Cheap suits? Polyester. Gore-Tex? You bet it's on polyester. Lyocell can pick up some of the slack in terms of durability, and if we ever nail down artificial silk it can insulate pretty well, but for water and mold resistance, pretty much everything else you can use will also leave behind microplastics. We're talking big downgrades in the quality of everything. Rumplestiltskin never seemed so real.
  - bdcravens 4y ago
    I've looked into this myself. I've moved to as many plastic-free and sustainable options as I can, but I just can't give up my preference for things like tri-blend shirts. Additionally, cotton is a very resource-intensive crop.
  - corrral 4y ago
    > You want mold-resistant carpets and kitchen towels Ugh, synthetic towels. They don't absorb anything, just push it around. They burn and/or melt if you try to use them as a substitute oven mitt. They're beyond awful. Get white cotton ones and bleach them. They actually function as towels, which should be the minimum standard for, you know, a towel. You don't need mold resistant towels. As for the rest: The cost problem's the main issue. Take away the cheapest materials, demand goes up for the next-cheapest and pretty soon it's not cheap anymore (yes, they can make more, but only to a point). Our society's totally adapted to clothes so cheap they're not worth repairing, that don't need special care because, even if extra care would make them last longer, they're so cheap it's not worth any time or materials, et c. Given the modern cost of labor in the developed world, a large chunk of the population would be doing a lot more DIY clothing repair than they do now.
lprd 4y ago
This has been brewing for the last 50~ years. The average testosterone level found in men is drastically lower than our ancestors. Testosterone is a man's primary hormone, and being deficient in it can cause a multitude of issues including depression, little to no sex drive, and even sperm count. Yes, diet and exercise play a role in overall health and T production, but this goes deeper than that. I know the article isn't about testosterone, but I believe this is all connected in some way or another.
- AtlasBarfed 4y ago
  Endocrine disruptors, diet, plastics, reduced exercise (exercise absolutely causes more testosterone to build muscle in response to stress), less violent and physical environment/society, other pollutants. Heck, sitting in chairs puts your testes closer to your body, which reduces sperm count. There are tons of reasons that probably add up. The scary part might be the pollutants though. Women also change their level of testosterone preference based on the stress level of environment. Civilization is by definition a less stressful environment regardless of inflation/unemployment rate.
- abeppu 4y ago
  > The average testosterone level found in men is drastically lower than our ancestors. I'm curious -- how far back do we have good data on that? When did we learn enough to measure it? Are there techniques to estimate it for people in the far past, or is this the kind of thing where you really need to collect / process samples at the time of interest?
  - Balgair 4y ago
    Cigarette smoking increases testosterone levels in men [0]. With the decreased prevalence of cigarette smoking in many countries, we should expect average testosterone levels to fall as a result. The hard part about historical data would be to disentangle the smokers from the nonsmokers and then find a way to measure testosterone to see if there is yet another factor at play. I'm not aware of any easy methods to conclusively preform that analysis. [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24457405/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24457405/
legitster 4y ago
Sample size of 98. No controls or comparisons. And they specifically were searching for chemicals with anomalous representation. Take it with a grain of salt big enough to club someone with.
- diydsp 4y ago
  It's not an experiment, it's a study. > The team then compared the results with acceptable levels of exposure derived from the scientific literature.
- tinco 4y ago
  Sample size of 98 is pretty large for this kind of study. What sort of sample size would you suggest, and why?
  - legitster 4y ago
    > The researchers acknowledged some limitations to their research. > For example, the data used dated from 2009 to 2010, and exposure to BPA may have decreased since, while exposure to other chemicals may have increased. > Another uncertainty is whether women of reproductive age have the same levels of chemical exposure as the men in the study. Even the researchers suggested a wider time frame and a larger comparison group.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      Every research ever conducted suggests a larger study. Is there any quarterly report that doesnt suggest doing something to invrease profits
- ipnon 4y ago
  It's good to be sceptical but this is a pandemic of sexual dysfunction that needs a working theory as soon as possible, and these results are in line with our current understanding of pollution endocrinology.
Geee 4y ago
How to avoid BPA?
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  Avoid plastics - particularly when it comes to food.
  - corrral 4y ago
    Really hard to do. Better get used to gardening—a lot. Produce? Often wrapped in plastic. Anything canned? Those cans are lined in plastic, so goodbye canned tomatoes. Frozen veggies? Plastic bags. Anything that comes in an apparently paper sack? Probably a plastic liner layer on the inside. If you go extreme with it, you can't even use stuff that comes in glass jars or bottles—the inside of the lid is plastic.
    - bergenty 4y ago
      It’s relatively easy if you buy fresh fruits and vegetables and meat from a butcher.
    - klipt 4y ago
      I thought the plastic mostly leeches out with heat. So cans with plastic lining: bad, the canning process uses heat. Raw vegetables in a plastic bag? Not so bad, you can wash them and then cook them yourself (but avoid non stick cookware which has PFAS coatings - use stainless steel and cast iron instead).
    - germinalphrase 4y ago
      Commenter asked how to ‘avoid’ BPA, not eliminate it entirely. Why let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I also think you’re overstating the difficulty of avoiding major sources of BPA. Most cling wrap doesn’t contain phalates. Buy fresh food and cook as much as possible.
    - JasserInicide 4y ago
      I don't have much to back it up, but I think adding heat to the equation is the biggest catalyst to how many chemicals leech into the food. Basically, avoid heating up food in anything plastic.
Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
antiverse 4y ago
How do these chemicals get into the body and into the sperm/urine? If it's a matter of controlling what we eat, then hitting the gym isn't enough. We'll have to curtail and adjust diets as best as we can, start being more careful around what sprays/treatments are used in vegetables and what anti/pro biotics the animals are fed with. We'll need stricter nutritional breakdown on this. We might even need to cut out certain foods if, by default, they are harmful to us past a certain quantity. We will have to switch from using the plastics we use in bottles and food storage containers to safer ones. Would fasting help here, even? If it's a matter of quality of air, we'll need to install better indoor filters (assuming we spend most of our time indoors). Outdoor air pollution is something we can't really solve on a dime, so to speak, as it would need greater intervention by Big Government et al to put into motion (good luck with this). So we'll have to do the best we can on our own, limited budgets, that we can to reduce the impact. For those who can afford it, living in an over all healthier outdoor-air-quality place is the way to go. Does it permeate from/through the clothes and through the skin? Feel free to add more of this sort of thing as a reply. At this point, having seen what I've seen, all bets are off that anyone other than ourselves will actually lift a finger to solve this, so we'll have to do it by ourselves, for ourselves. So keep lifting.
- filoeleven 4y ago
  I expect endocrine disrupters to play a big role in low sperm counts, low testosterone, increases obesity, specific cancers, probably many other things. They have outsized effects at very low levels, and we aren’t very good at regulating exposure to them. See for example the whole BPA thing (along with many other plastics), PFAS, etc.
  - klipt 4y ago
    And as soon as BPA was discouraged companies switched to the close analog BPS which hadn't been proven harmful yet.
    - filoeleven 4y ago
      Yep. And a cursory search, because I hadn’t heard of this one, shows that BPS also has pretty significant effects on animals that are not humans. Maybe we’re special though! I’ve read that the EU is more proactive about banning chemicals: companies there have to prove that they are safe for humans, vs the US where companies can go wild unless and until the chemicals are proven to be unsafe for humans. I don’t know if that’s true though; I haven’t looked deeply into it.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
logicalmonster 4y ago
Is this actually real news to anybody? The so-called disinformation-prone conspiracy-theorists have been strongly emphasizing the problem of plastics and chemicals in the water having a negative affect on testosterone and sperm counts for many, many years. So why is this being reported on more just now? And beyond the science, what are the real social consequences of lower testosterone and sperm counts? You could look at lower birth rates particularly in developed nations, and less natural male aggression leading to a more docile and controllable population. Just an observation.
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  there are also plenty of things that the disinformation-prone conspiracy theorists think that are clearly falsifiable. A stopped clock is right twice a day and all that. It doesn't actually matter what some crank thinks without evidence to back it up.
  - antiverse 4y ago
    This is a very mean-spirited response to people who are on the lookout for the safety of themselves and those around them, distrustful of believing everything they're told because "so-and-so said and they know better so you should listen." Especially on HN, it's a particularly shrewd assessment where we ought to be critical of every single thing we are told, and told to believe - because we've been burnt before, we've learned our lessons, and we ought to know better. The part of the play is to assume that everyone who is labeled a "conspiracy theorist" automatically believes in far out things like the planet being flat. It's a very good disqualification mechanism, and people buy into it easily. Lets not bring that to HN.
    - idiotsecant 4y ago
      No, requiring evidence for believing things is neither mean spirited or a disqualification method. It's simply a rational worldview.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
impostervt 4y ago
So, I know this is anecdotal, but I've seen a number of my friends (mostly male engineers) have kids later in life (35+), and a higher-than-I-would-expect number of those kids have developmental problems. Some act out more violently than you'd expect from a little kid, some just have ADHD-seeming issues, and some are just not progressing at the "expected" rate. Is this a real thing? Anyone else notice it? I'm not even sure how to google it.
- all2 4y ago
  Dr. Campbell-McBride, "Gut and Psychology Syndrome" is worth a read. You're not wrong in noticing that something is wrong. No doubt folks will come out of the woodwork yelling "anec-data!". Trust your gut and keep looking.
  - jjeaff 4y ago
    I think it's very difficult to know just from observation if there are more issues today. For one, it wasn't that long ago that many cities had ordinances that actually banned disabled people from being out in public. And things like autism were not diagnosed.
- pythonic_hell 4y ago
  The age of a man when conception occurred is a known (and not new) factor in determining the health of a child. Sperm from old men (after 30) starts to introduce all sorts of risks such as Aspergers and autoimmune diseases. In fact the age of the father is one of the only variables that have been shown to correlate with the prevalence of Asperger in children.
  - xyzzy123 4y ago
    Wouldn't a very accessible explanation for that correlation be that aspie-leaning men might tend to have children later in life? I should really go find the studies.
    - 4y ago
honkler 4y ago
qgin 4y ago
Paracetamol (aka acetaminophen) is a risk factor?
humaniania 4y ago
This euronews site is really weird. Majority owned by an advisor and friend of far right Orban. Pushing the same kind of anti-male conspiracy stuff as Tucker Carlson. Weird history of stories submitted for the domain.
- linkingday 4y ago
  think we should be focusing on the academic journal rather than the sketchy news site. this seems to be a legitimate study.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - kurupt213 4y ago
    Forget silent spring ... sounds like we're headed for silent ding-a-ling.
- sumy23 4y ago
  I've been reading about this issue for a few years. Here is something in GQ from 2018: https://www.gq.com/story/sperm-count-zero https://www.gq.com/story/sperm-count-zero
- bergenty 4y ago
  This particular paper seems legit.
- npteljes 4y ago
  I'm conflicted about this. A bias checker site lists it as being highly factual and pro-EU, left-leaning, which is basically antitheic to Orban. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/euronews/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/euronews/
  - humaniania 4y ago
    "Any site attempting to measure the highly subjective issue of bias should be taken with a grain of salt, if not a heaping tablespoon. That appears to be the case with the popular Media Bias / FactCheck web site. The well-respected nonprofit journalism organizations Poynter Institute and the Columbia Journalism Review have raised questions about the site, its research credentials and owner Dave Van Zandt. Most troubling is its lack of serious research methods or credentials. Owner and editor Van Zandt is a self-described “armchair media analyst. Van Zandt said in a response (below) that he has worked in a research-related capacity in the healthcare industry. Media Bias / Fact Check's rankings are based on a scale that Van Zandt developed on his own; the research and reporting are done by volunteers. Use it at your own risk."
mike_hearn 4y ago
Some things worth bearing in mind. These studies come from the field of epidemiology, which is notorious for low quality studies that rely on flawed assumptions to create apocalyptic scenarios. Everything coming out of this field has to be assumed to be suspect until thoroughly vetted by outsiders. At least, that's my personal belief. Let's do a quick literature review to check if there's disagreement with the claims of the researchers. Firstly, are sperm counts actually falling at all? The article says: "Sperm quantity and quality have dramatically declined across Western countries in recent decades, with research suggesting sperm counts have been more than halved in the space of 40 years." But Tong2022 [1] says: "Concerns regarding declining sperm counts have existed for over 50 years, and even predate the use of a standard means to assess semen characteristics ... in the field of reproduction, the contention that sperm counts are declining is not universally accepted and has been a hotly debated topic over the last several decades.1,5-9" If they are falling, does it actually matter? "... our review suggests that a decline in sperm counts does not necessarily translate to a decline in male fertility" A New York Times report [2] on their study stated: "Now a group of interdisciplinary researchers from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology contend that fears of an impending Spermageddon have been vastly overstated. In a study published in May in the journal Human Fertility, they re-evaluated the 2017 review and found that it relied on flawed assumptions and failed to consider alternate explanations for the apparent decline of sperm ... even the data that passed muster was geographically sparse and uneven and often lacked basic criteria like the age of the men. Moreover, its authors took for granted that a single metric — sperm count — was an accurate predictor of male fertility and overall health ... no one knows what an “optimal” sperm count is ... as methodologies for counting had improved and been standardized since the 1980s, sperm counts had appeared to fall. In other words, it may simply be that earlier scientists were overcounting sperm." A lot of this stuff originates in a 2017 meta-study by Dr Swan et al. Tom Chivers reviews Swan's book on the "spermogeddon" [3]: "the book does not seem sensible. Because for Swan, everything causes fertility problems, not just phthalates. Sugar, beef, cycling, stress, watching TV, doing too much exercise, doing too little, eating the wrong diet; you can barely get out of bed in the morning without sabotaging your chance of having a baby ... I half expected her to say we ought to wear ray-shielded underpants ... She even suggests that the growth in intersex conditions and perhaps the rise of gender dysphoria, and even changes in gender identity, could be because of EDCs (and taking paracetamol in pregnancy!) This hyperventilating about human extinction, and rolling everything bad into a ball labelled “fertility and phthalates”, makes no sense if you think Swan (a respected epidemiologist) is trying to give a dispassionate assessment of fertility issues. But she’s not. This is a polemic." A key problem with Swan's argument is that she and others like her define fertility as how many babies women have. This makes it easy to draw a correlation between falling sperm counts and falling fertility, but eliminates the impact of free choice. Women prefer to have fewer children as their countries get richer and child mortality falls, but as far as these "respected epidemiologists" are concerned that's apparently out of scope. [1] https://bcmj.org/sites/default/files/BCMJ_Vol64_No3_bcmd2b.pdf https://bcmj.org/sites/default/files/BCMJ_Vol64_No3_bcmd2b.p... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/health/sperm-fertility-reproduction-crisis.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/health/sperm-fertility-re... [3] https://unherd.com/2021/03/the-truth-about-spermageddon/ https://unherd.com/2021/03/the-truth-about-spermageddon/
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
In other news, svientists find strong evidence that the obesity epidemic is caused by pollution: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/19/environmental-toxins-are-worsening-obesity-pandemic-say-scientists https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/19/environm...
watersb 4y ago
Last I checked, my urine was almost entirely made of chemicals.
SergeAx 4y ago
The original study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412022002495 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...
Tozen 4y ago
At the point where plastic particles were being found in the blood of unborn babies, and that was not enough to push governments into stronger actions to protect the populace, then not sure that reporting alarming lowered sperm counts will do much either.

188 points by donsupreme 4y ago

Also relevant: https://www.psypost.org/2022/06/study-finds-early-exposure-to-testosterone-predicts-gender-role-behaviors-in-boys-63250 https://www.psypost.org/2022/06/study-finds-early-exposure-t... > Low exposure to gonadal hormones during early gestation and infancy predicts higher recalled childhood gender nonconformity in men, according to new research published in Psychological Science. The findings provide evidence androgens such as testosterone play a role in the development of male-typical gender role behaviors in childhood.

twoxproblematic 4y ago
dehrmann 4y ago
I know someone with a theory that the rise of "the pill" is a factor in male-typical gender role behaviors. Essentially, the pill is only 91% effective over a year in practice, the mother doesn't know she's pregnant, continues taking estrogen pills during the first trimester, and this impacts the development of the fetus. In the US, it wasn't really widely available to around 1970, so it lines up somewhat with increased rates of homosexuality. No idea if it's true, but the timeline and mechanism of action seem plausible. The rise of the pill also happened around a time of greater LGBT awareness, so overall awareness is also a factor.
- Workaccount2 4y ago
  That might also fit with the fact that the youngest is usually the homosexual one. Mom started taking the pill to prevent anymore kids, but one slipped through.
- whatthedangheck 4y ago
  It seems plausible. During the first section of this talk on transgender medical care Dr. Will Powers touches on exactly what you're talking about except in his example it was a highly potent estrogen prescribed to mothers who had had miscarriages to take during pregnancy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fefu33e8O-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fefu33e8O-0
- zo1 4y ago
  If true, that sounds like something that should have worried and concerned those that "certified" those pills safe for human consumption.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  The pill is probably responsible for a bunch of crap at the societal level just like any other group of hormone changing medications taken by such a wide chunk of the population would be. But it probably has little to do with homosexuality since we have good historical record of prevalence varying inversely with persecution.
  - annyeonghada 4y ago
    >prevalence varying inversely with persecution No, we don't because before we didn't even count. It is possible that 1. there were fewer homosexual men in the past 2. increase in the number of homosexual men is due to less persecution are both contemporarily true.
- jjoonathan 4y ago
  That, and guys tend to medicate their hormones too these days (finasteride). Yes, DHT is "just" a parallel path -- but when is biology ever that cut and dry, especially when there's so much money to be made?
  - scythe 4y ago
    Does anyone actually start taking finasteride before the emergence of sexuality, though? As far as I'm aware, treatment is usually initiated at age 21 or later. In that case, changes in sexuality should be very hard to miss, and we'd know by now.
    - jjoonathan 4y ago
      Yeah, it's after puberty -- but are you so sure it would be hard to miss? Small effects with lots of confounding variables and an enormous profit incentive to miss seem easy to miss.
      - scythe 4y ago
        In order to do due diligence for this reply, I typed "finasteride" into Google Scholar, and the first suggestion was "finasteride side effects", which brings up 20,500 results, including highly cited papers dealing specifically with sexual side effects: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1743609515337863 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S174360951... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1743609515335566 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S17436... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1557988314538445 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15579883145384... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0015028219325993 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001502821... I think that in that context, it would be hard to miss!
- brightball 4y ago
  Oh, I've wondered about the societal effects of birth control pills for a couple of decades. Stuff like the above theory, effects on difficulty conceiving when women get off of it finally. Talk to a doctor sometime about the volume of 30+ year old women who are on some type of daily anxiety medication. My understanding is that it's approaching 50% or higher. Was that level of anxiety among women common before birth control? IMO there are a whole lot of questions that come from it.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    You spotted a social phenomena, but you have no reason to blame the borth control pill- it could bechemical pollution, tefllon, etc.
    - brightball 4y ago
      There’s certainly plausible reason to wonder about it. Consider how many women take it, for many many years. Many women go through multiple different types of pills due to the effects certain pills will have on their body, from weight gain to period frequency. You do that for 5, 10, 15…20 years…it’s reasonable to wonder what it will do longer term. At the same time, as you age and have older friend groups it’s hard not to notice a correlation between the friends you have who never took birth control or minimally took it who also have no anxiety issues and those that don’t. Maybe it could be something else but IMO it warrants further study.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  As I once read, the contraceptive is not eliminated by the body, so it gets washed out by the kidneys and ends up via sewers in water everywhere. No idea how long-lived it is though. I guess it would break down naturally?
- abeppu 4y ago
  > so it lines up somewhat with increased rates of homosexuality ... but isn't it really hard to distinguish _actual_ rates of homosexuality from visible homosexuality? As public acceptance for LGBT people has increased, more people can feel safe coming out or identifying as gay. Further, if the pill became widely available around 1970, and if this were an impactful factor, wouldn't you expect to see the corresponding change beginning in at least the mid 80s, as those kids grow up?
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    LGBT rates among zoomers is shockingly high to me. 20%, double that of millenials. Millenials are double that of Gen X. I tend to believe there’s a genuine biological phenomenon going on here. The next generation should be just starting to establish their sexual orientations. The data should be interesting…
    - concinds 4y ago
      The increase is almost entirely in bisexuality. I think the biological argument is strong.
    - staticman2 4y ago
      We have records showing male male sex was common in ancient Greece.
      - oneoff786 4y ago
        Yeah, mostly rich older dudes fucking young boys. Greece was not some idyllic free love society. It was just that being a top was super manly and being a bottom was not. You didn’t have wealthy men in openly gay equal relationships with other men.
        Der_Einzige 4y ago
        Pretty sure poor people weren't being allowed into the most elite unit in the Greek world (since you had to buy your armor!) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Band_of_Thebes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Band_of_Thebes
- nkrisc 4y ago
  You have to take "rates of homosexuality" with a huge amount of skepticism considering it was often illegal until recently and could even get you killed. You have to assume any data from the 70s or earlier is severely under-reported. Any research into the subject was also taboo, frowned upon, or even actively discouraged, or outright disallowed.

mistrial9 4y ago

Green Chemistry and the Body Burden publicity of 2000s.. "I told you so" only goes so far.. deeply troubling..

no_wizard 4y ago

I wonder if lower sex drive is also caused by this sort of thing? I'll admit, I don't think I've ever had a normal sex drive. My partner is very frustrated by this at times. Its not an attraction thing, I don't know the "why" per se here. I'd be interested to know if these things are correlated. I'd also be open to hearing about how to reverse it. (I'm 30 years old, supposedly I should be not this) Speaking in aggregates, there have also been reports[0] of this happening across the world, including pre-pandemic[1] [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/mar/16/not-tonight-darling-how-the-world-lost-its-libido-and-how-it-can-get-it-back https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/mar/16/not-ton... [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/29/share-americans-not-having-sex-has-reached-record-high/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/29/share-ame...

fithisux 4y ago
Me too having the same problem. Possibly plastic bottles?
- pengaru 4y ago
  Fortunately you can literally measure a male's ango-genital distance to see if they're underdeveloped as has been observed from Bisphenol A exposure. I wonder if it's a check doctors are generally doing now.
  - fithisux 4y ago
    Mine did not even mention the case of pollutants. He said heart problems or psychological problems.
    - pengaru 4y ago
      Maybe they just measure testosterone levels and avoid the awkward conversation (and potentially depressing conclusion) of determining how fully developed you are from your time in the womb. Is there even much they can do about it other than TRT anyways?
4y ago

bobro 4y ago

what is this title? how does a falling sperm count find something?

acbullen 4y ago
I think the implication is 'Falling sperm counts [study] finds 'alarming' levels of chemicals in male urine'
SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
If they are looking for sperm in urine I think I've found the problem.
- davzie 4y ago
  Not for the old boys on Tamsulosin
fguerraz 4y ago
And reading the article, I see no link between sperm count and these chemicals.
elicash 4y ago
"Find" is being used here as a noun, not a verb.
dang 4y ago
The article's title exceeds 80 chars so the submitter had to shorten it. We've adjusted the wording now.

ParksNet 4y ago

We need to ban entire categories of chemicals, if they are ever going to be in contact with food or potable water, including at end of life: phthalates, bisphenols, PFAS. We also need to ban polyester clothing, at least for categories washed frequently: socks, tshirts, underwear. Polyester clothing is made from discarded plastic and inevitably degrades into microplastics inside your own house, bed, washing machine.

scythe 4y ago
>ban polyester clothing I'm sympathetic, but I'm afraid people don't realize just how incredibly difficult this would be. Polyethylene terephthalate, colloquially "polyester", has completely transformed the textile industry. You want mold-resistant carpets and kitchen towels? Polyester. Water-resistant lightweight warm clothes? Polyester. Ultra-light athletic clothes? Polyester. Bathing suits that don't chafe? Polyester. Durable, stain-resistant upholstery? Polyester. Fuzzy blankets? Polyester. Cheap suits? Polyester. Gore-Tex? You bet it's on polyester. Lyocell can pick up some of the slack in terms of durability, and if we ever nail down artificial silk it can insulate pretty well, but for water and mold resistance, pretty much everything else you can use will also leave behind microplastics. We're talking big downgrades in the quality of everything. Rumplestiltskin never seemed so real.
- bdcravens 4y ago
  I've looked into this myself. I've moved to as many plastic-free and sustainable options as I can, but I just can't give up my preference for things like tri-blend shirts. Additionally, cotton is a very resource-intensive crop.
- corrral 4y ago
  > You want mold-resistant carpets and kitchen towels Ugh, synthetic towels. They don't absorb anything, just push it around. They burn and/or melt if you try to use them as a substitute oven mitt. They're beyond awful. Get white cotton ones and bleach them. They actually function as towels, which should be the minimum standard for, you know, a towel. You don't need mold resistant towels. As for the rest: The cost problem's the main issue. Take away the cheapest materials, demand goes up for the next-cheapest and pretty soon it's not cheap anymore (yes, they can make more, but only to a point). Our society's totally adapted to clothes so cheap they're not worth repairing, that don't need special care because, even if extra care would make them last longer, they're so cheap it's not worth any time or materials, et c. Given the modern cost of labor in the developed world, a large chunk of the population would be doing a lot more DIY clothing repair than they do now.

lprd 4y ago

This has been brewing for the last 50~ years. The average testosterone level found in men is drastically lower than our ancestors. Testosterone is a man's primary hormone, and being deficient in it can cause a multitude of issues including depression, little to no sex drive, and even sperm count. Yes, diet and exercise play a role in overall health and T production, but this goes deeper than that. I know the article isn't about testosterone, but I believe this is all connected in some way or another.

AtlasBarfed 4y ago
Endocrine disruptors, diet, plastics, reduced exercise (exercise absolutely causes more testosterone to build muscle in response to stress), less violent and physical environment/society, other pollutants. Heck, sitting in chairs puts your testes closer to your body, which reduces sperm count. There are tons of reasons that probably add up. The scary part might be the pollutants though. Women also change their level of testosterone preference based on the stress level of environment. Civilization is by definition a less stressful environment regardless of inflation/unemployment rate.
abeppu 4y ago
> The average testosterone level found in men is drastically lower than our ancestors. I'm curious -- how far back do we have good data on that? When did we learn enough to measure it? Are there techniques to estimate it for people in the far past, or is this the kind of thing where you really need to collect / process samples at the time of interest?
- Balgair 4y ago
  Cigarette smoking increases testosterone levels in men [0]. With the decreased prevalence of cigarette smoking in many countries, we should expect average testosterone levels to fall as a result. The hard part about historical data would be to disentangle the smokers from the nonsmokers and then find a way to measure testosterone to see if there is yet another factor at play. I'm not aware of any easy methods to conclusively preform that analysis. [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24457405/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24457405/

legitster 4y ago

Sample size of 98. No controls or comparisons. And they specifically were searching for chemicals with anomalous representation. Take it with a grain of salt big enough to club someone with.

diydsp 4y ago
It's not an experiment, it's a study. > The team then compared the results with acceptable levels of exposure derived from the scientific literature.
tinco 4y ago
Sample size of 98 is pretty large for this kind of study. What sort of sample size would you suggest, and why?
- legitster 4y ago
  > The researchers acknowledged some limitations to their research. > For example, the data used dated from 2009 to 2010, and exposure to BPA may have decreased since, while exposure to other chemicals may have increased. > Another uncertainty is whether women of reproductive age have the same levels of chemical exposure as the men in the study. Even the researchers suggested a wider time frame and a larger comparison group.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    Every research ever conducted suggests a larger study. Is there any quarterly report that doesnt suggest doing something to invrease profits
ipnon 4y ago
It's good to be sceptical but this is a pandemic of sexual dysfunction that needs a working theory as soon as possible, and these results are in line with our current understanding of pollution endocrinology.

Geee 4y ago

How to avoid BPA?

germinalphrase 4y ago
Avoid plastics - particularly when it comes to food.
- corrral 4y ago
  Really hard to do. Better get used to gardening—a lot. Produce? Often wrapped in plastic. Anything canned? Those cans are lined in plastic, so goodbye canned tomatoes. Frozen veggies? Plastic bags. Anything that comes in an apparently paper sack? Probably a plastic liner layer on the inside. If you go extreme with it, you can't even use stuff that comes in glass jars or bottles—the inside of the lid is plastic.
  - bergenty 4y ago
    It’s relatively easy if you buy fresh fruits and vegetables and meat from a butcher.
  - klipt 4y ago
    I thought the plastic mostly leeches out with heat. So cans with plastic lining: bad, the canning process uses heat. Raw vegetables in a plastic bag? Not so bad, you can wash them and then cook them yourself (but avoid non stick cookware which has PFAS coatings - use stainless steel and cast iron instead).
  - germinalphrase 4y ago
    Commenter asked how to ‘avoid’ BPA, not eliminate it entirely. Why let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I also think you’re overstating the difficulty of avoiding major sources of BPA. Most cling wrap doesn’t contain phalates. Buy fresh food and cook as much as possible.
  - JasserInicide 4y ago
    I don't have much to back it up, but I think adding heat to the equation is the biggest catalyst to how many chemicals leech into the food. Basically, avoid heating up food in anything plastic.

Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago

antiverse 4y ago

How do these chemicals get into the body and into the sperm/urine? If it's a matter of controlling what we eat, then hitting the gym isn't enough. We'll have to curtail and adjust diets as best as we can, start being more careful around what sprays/treatments are used in vegetables and what anti/pro biotics the animals are fed with. We'll need stricter nutritional breakdown on this. We might even need to cut out certain foods if, by default, they are harmful to us past a certain quantity. We will have to switch from using the plastics we use in bottles and food storage containers to safer ones. Would fasting help here, even? If it's a matter of quality of air, we'll need to install better indoor filters (assuming we spend most of our time indoors). Outdoor air pollution is something we can't really solve on a dime, so to speak, as it would need greater intervention by Big Government et al to put into motion (good luck with this). So we'll have to do the best we can on our own, limited budgets, that we can to reduce the impact. For those who can afford it, living in an over all healthier outdoor-air-quality place is the way to go. Does it permeate from/through the clothes and through the skin? Feel free to add more of this sort of thing as a reply. At this point, having seen what I've seen, all bets are off that anyone other than ourselves will actually lift a finger to solve this, so we'll have to do it by ourselves, for ourselves. So keep lifting.

filoeleven 4y ago
I expect endocrine disrupters to play a big role in low sperm counts, low testosterone, increases obesity, specific cancers, probably many other things. They have outsized effects at very low levels, and we aren’t very good at regulating exposure to them. See for example the whole BPA thing (along with many other plastics), PFAS, etc.
- klipt 4y ago
  And as soon as BPA was discouraged companies switched to the close analog BPS which hadn't been proven harmful yet.
  - filoeleven 4y ago
    Yep. And a cursory search, because I hadn’t heard of this one, shows that BPS also has pretty significant effects on animals that are not humans. Maybe we’re special though! I’ve read that the EU is more proactive about banning chemicals: companies there have to prove that they are safe for humans, vs the US where companies can go wild unless and until the chemicals are proven to be unsafe for humans. I don’t know if that’s true though; I haven’t looked deeply into it.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

logicalmonster 4y ago

Is this actually real news to anybody? The so-called disinformation-prone conspiracy-theorists have been strongly emphasizing the problem of plastics and chemicals in the water having a negative affect on testosterone and sperm counts for many, many years. So why is this being reported on more just now? And beyond the science, what are the real social consequences of lower testosterone and sperm counts? You could look at lower birth rates particularly in developed nations, and less natural male aggression leading to a more docile and controllable population. Just an observation.

idiotsecant 4y ago
there are also plenty of things that the disinformation-prone conspiracy theorists think that are clearly falsifiable. A stopped clock is right twice a day and all that. It doesn't actually matter what some crank thinks without evidence to back it up.
- antiverse 4y ago
  This is a very mean-spirited response to people who are on the lookout for the safety of themselves and those around them, distrustful of believing everything they're told because "so-and-so said and they know better so you should listen." Especially on HN, it's a particularly shrewd assessment where we ought to be critical of every single thing we are told, and told to believe - because we've been burnt before, we've learned our lessons, and we ought to know better. The part of the play is to assume that everyone who is labeled a "conspiracy theorist" automatically believes in far out things like the planet being flat. It's a very good disqualification mechanism, and people buy into it easily. Lets not bring that to HN.
  - idiotsecant 4y ago
    No, requiring evidence for believing things is neither mean spirited or a disqualification method. It's simply a rational worldview.
stjohnswarts 4y ago

impostervt 4y ago

So, I know this is anecdotal, but I've seen a number of my friends (mostly male engineers) have kids later in life (35+), and a higher-than-I-would-expect number of those kids have developmental problems. Some act out more violently than you'd expect from a little kid, some just have ADHD-seeming issues, and some are just not progressing at the "expected" rate. Is this a real thing? Anyone else notice it? I'm not even sure how to google it.

all2 4y ago
Dr. Campbell-McBride, "Gut and Psychology Syndrome" is worth a read. You're not wrong in noticing that something is wrong. No doubt folks will come out of the woodwork yelling "anec-data!". Trust your gut and keep looking.
- jjeaff 4y ago
  I think it's very difficult to know just from observation if there are more issues today. For one, it wasn't that long ago that many cities had ordinances that actually banned disabled people from being out in public. And things like autism were not diagnosed.
pythonic_hell 4y ago
The age of a man when conception occurred is a known (and not new) factor in determining the health of a child. Sperm from old men (after 30) starts to introduce all sorts of risks such as Aspergers and autoimmune diseases. In fact the age of the father is one of the only variables that have been shown to correlate with the prevalence of Asperger in children.
- xyzzy123 4y ago
  Wouldn't a very accessible explanation for that correlation be that aspie-leaning men might tend to have children later in life? I should really go find the studies.
  - 4y ago

honkler 4y ago

qgin 4y ago

Paracetamol (aka acetaminophen) is a risk factor?

humaniania 4y ago

This euronews site is really weird. Majority owned by an advisor and friend of far right Orban. Pushing the same kind of anti-male conspiracy stuff as Tucker Carlson. Weird history of stories submitted for the domain.

linkingday 4y ago
think we should be focusing on the academic journal rather than the sketchy news site. this seems to be a legitimate study.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- kurupt213 4y ago
  Forget silent spring ... sounds like we're headed for silent ding-a-ling.
sumy23 4y ago
I've been reading about this issue for a few years. Here is something in GQ from 2018: https://www.gq.com/story/sperm-count-zero https://www.gq.com/story/sperm-count-zero
bergenty 4y ago
This particular paper seems legit.
npteljes 4y ago
I'm conflicted about this. A bias checker site lists it as being highly factual and pro-EU, left-leaning, which is basically antitheic to Orban. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/euronews/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/euronews/
- humaniania 4y ago
  "Any site attempting to measure the highly subjective issue of bias should be taken with a grain of salt, if not a heaping tablespoon. That appears to be the case with the popular Media Bias / FactCheck web site. The well-respected nonprofit journalism organizations Poynter Institute and the Columbia Journalism Review have raised questions about the site, its research credentials and owner Dave Van Zandt. Most troubling is its lack of serious research methods or credentials. Owner and editor Van Zandt is a self-described “armchair media analyst. Van Zandt said in a response (below) that he has worked in a research-related capacity in the healthcare industry. Media Bias / Fact Check's rankings are based on a scale that Van Zandt developed on his own; the research and reporting are done by volunteers. Use it at your own risk."

mike_hearn 4y ago

Some things worth bearing in mind. These studies come from the field of epidemiology, which is notorious for low quality studies that rely on flawed assumptions to create apocalyptic scenarios. Everything coming out of this field has to be assumed to be suspect until thoroughly vetted by outsiders. At least, that's my personal belief. Let's do a quick literature review to check if there's disagreement with the claims of the researchers. Firstly, are sperm counts actually falling at all? The article says: "Sperm quantity and quality have dramatically declined across Western countries in recent decades, with research suggesting sperm counts have been more than halved in the space of 40 years." But Tong2022 [1] says: "Concerns regarding declining sperm counts have existed for over 50 years, and even predate the use of a standard means to assess semen characteristics ... in the field of reproduction, the contention that sperm counts are declining is not universally accepted and has been a hotly debated topic over the last several decades.1,5-9" If they are falling, does it actually matter? "... our review suggests that a decline in sperm counts does not necessarily translate to a decline in male fertility" A New York Times report [2] on their study stated: "Now a group of interdisciplinary researchers from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology contend that fears of an impending Spermageddon have been vastly overstated. In a study published in May in the journal Human Fertility, they re-evaluated the 2017 review and found that it relied on flawed assumptions and failed to consider alternate explanations for the apparent decline of sperm ... even the data that passed muster was geographically sparse and uneven and often lacked basic criteria like the age of the men. Moreover, its authors took for granted that a single metric — sperm count — was an accurate predictor of male fertility and overall health ... no one knows what an “optimal” sperm count is ... as methodologies for counting had improved and been standardized since the 1980s, sperm counts had appeared to fall. In other words, it may simply be that earlier scientists were overcounting sperm." A lot of this stuff originates in a 2017 meta-study by Dr Swan et al. Tom Chivers reviews Swan's book on the "spermogeddon" [3]: "the book does not seem sensible. Because for Swan, everything causes fertility problems, not just phthalates. Sugar, beef, cycling, stress, watching TV, doing too much exercise, doing too little, eating the wrong diet; you can barely get out of bed in the morning without sabotaging your chance of having a baby ... I half expected her to say we ought to wear ray-shielded underpants ... She even suggests that the growth in intersex conditions and perhaps the rise of gender dysphoria, and even changes in gender identity, could be because of EDCs (and taking paracetamol in pregnancy!) This hyperventilating about human extinction, and rolling everything bad into a ball labelled “fertility and phthalates”, makes no sense if you think Swan (a respected epidemiologist) is trying to give a dispassionate assessment of fertility issues. But she’s not. This is a polemic." A key problem with Swan's argument is that she and others like her define fertility as how many babies women have. This makes it easy to draw a correlation between falling sperm counts and falling fertility, but eliminates the impact of free choice. Women prefer to have fewer children as their countries get richer and child mortality falls, but as far as these "respected epidemiologists" are concerned that's apparently out of scope. [1] https://bcmj.org/sites/default/files/BCMJ_Vol64_No3_bcmd2b.pdf https://bcmj.org/sites/default/files/BCMJ_Vol64_No3_bcmd2b.p... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/health/sperm-fertility-reproduction-crisis.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/health/sperm-fertility-re... [3] https://unherd.com/2021/03/the-truth-about-spermageddon/ https://unherd.com/2021/03/the-truth-about-spermageddon/

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

In other news, svientists find strong evidence that the obesity epidemic is caused by pollution: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/19/environmental-toxins-are-worsening-obesity-pandemic-say-scientists https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/19/environm...

watersb 4y ago

Last I checked, my urine was almost entirely made of chemicals.

SergeAx 4y ago

The original study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412022002495 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...

Tozen 4y ago

At the point where plastic particles were being found in the blood of unborn babies, and that was not enough to push governments into stronger actions to protect the populace, then not sure that reporting alarming lowered sperm counts will do much either.