Plastics,
dioxins and paracetamol are key players in decline in male fertility – Study
For
the first time, a study ranks the chemicals most harmful to human sperm
quality.
The
fast fall in human fertility demonstrates the tight relationship between
population health and environmental quality. In a study published Thursday,
June 9 in the journal Environment International, British and Danish experts
emphasize this once more. The authors give the first assessment of the hazards
to male fertility caused by mixes of ordinary chemicals, led by Andreas
Kortenkamp (Brunel University, London) and Hanne Frederiksen (Rigshospitalet,
Copenhagen University Hospital).
They
were able to rank the compounds most suspected of lowering sperm quality in
order of their contribution to the current reduction. By far the most important
are plastics. BPA and its replacements (BPS, GMP), polychlorinated dioxins and
other plasticizers (phthalates), certain parabens, and paracetamol are the
worst (acetaminophen). According to the researchers, the general population's
median cumulative exposure level to these goods is nearly 20 times the risk
threshold.
For
the past 30 years, there has been a fall in male fertility. Diet, smoking,
stress, exposure to some common chemicals, and other things were considered to
be the reason. "Many studies have been conducted out over the world for
the past thirty years to quantify the features of human sperm," said Pierre
Jouannet, professor emeritus at the University of Paris-Descartes and one of
the major pioneers in this field of research. "The most serious of these,
notably in the most economically developed countries, demonstrate a reduction
in sperm quality."
A drop of 50% to 60% in less than forty
years
The
figures are startling. The most thorough summary to date was published in 2017.
Between 1973 and 2011, the average sperm concentration of Western men declined
from 99 million to 47 million sperm per milliliter, according to research led
by Shanna Swan (New York University) and published in the journal Human
Reproduction Update. In fewer than forty years, this represents a drop of 50%
to 60%.
Other,
more recent data indicate that the problem is still very much with us. In 2019,
a paper by Ashley Tiegs's team (Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia)
published in Urology studied 120,000 American and Spanish men from couples who
visited a reproductive health center. In this sample, the proportion of men
with fewer than 15 million motile sperm per milliliter increased from 12.4% to
21.3% between 2002 and 2017. This is an increase of nearly 10 percentage points
in 15 years within this population subgroup. Read More News
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