(Dr. Joseph Mercola) It was 1992 when Shanna Swan, Ph.D., a reproductive epidemiologist and professor of environmental medicine and public health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, first heard about a potential decline in fertility among humans. A study published in the BMJ that year had found evidence for decreasing quality of semen over the past 50 years.
Related Common Plastic Additive Linked to Fertility Problems
Source – Children’s Health Defense
by Dr. Joseph Mercola, November 8th, 2021
She thought it sounded pretty extreme, and maybe it wasn’t true, so she spent six months looking into it and evaluating the 61 studies included in the review. It turned out the decline was real and Swan directed her studies over the next two decades to unraveling this disturbing trend.
Over years of careful research, Swan revealed a smoking gun that is disrupting human development and reproduction to the point that she feels we’re threatened as a species.
The culprit is a class of chemicals called phthalates, which are so ubiquitous that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stated “phthalate exposure is widespread in the U.S. population.” An estimated 8.4 million metric tons of plasticizers, including phthalates, are used worldwide each year, with phthalate production amounting to about 4.9 million metric tons annually.
Sperm counts dropped by 59.3%
Swan’s book “Count Down,” is based on a 2017 study she co-wrote, which found sperm counts dropped by 59.3% from 1973 to 2011.
The most significant declines were found in samples from men in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, where many had sperm concentrations below 40 million/ml, which is considered the cutoff point at which a man will have trouble fertilizing an egg.
Overall, men in these countries had a 52.4% decline in sperm concentration and a 59.3% decline in total sperm count (sperm concentration multiplied by the total volume of an ejaculate).
There appears to be a synergy occurring as well, which Swan dubs “the 1% effect,” because sperm count, testosterone and fertility are dropping, and testicular cancer and miscarriage are rising, all at about 1% per year. In an interview with Mark W. of After Skool, which you can view in its entirety above, Swan said:
“The 1% effect is a change of 1% per year over a lot of years, so if sperm count declined 50% in 50 years that would be 1% per year … a 50% decline means cutting it in half. Cut your sperm count in half? I don’t think anyone wants to do that, right? It’s the same thing with testosterone.
“It’s also been going down at that same rate — 1% per year. Miscarriage or pregnancy loss has gone up in women at that same rate … Everything seems to be progressing at about the same rate of deterioration of reproductive function.”
Global fertility rates are also falling, reaching 2.4 births per woman in 2018, down from 5.06 in 1964. Fertility rates in about 50% of countries worldwide are at 2.1, which is below population replacement level, The Guardian reported.
Both men and women are being affected, and so are species other than humans. According to Swan, many species are experiencing significant genital disturbances and decreases in liver size. Species are being endangered by their declining fertility and reproductive function, and the declines are being caused by the same things that are affecting us.
Chemicals to blame for declining fertility
There are two primary causes that could be behind the fertility declines, Swan said — genetics or environment. The changes, however, are too rapid to be evolutionary, which crosses out a genetic factor. Moving to environment, both lifestyle and chemical factors can contribute.
Obesity, smoking, consuming excessive amounts of alcohol or binge drinking — even stress — are examples of factors you can control that are linked to lower sperm count and fertility. Chemicals, however, and phthalates specifically, appear to be the major problem. Swan explained:
“Reproductive function, sperm production, pregnancy and so on are controlled by the hormones … now, if you mess that up you can imagine that you’re messing up the end product — the sperm, the eggs, the pregnancy — and that’s what happens.
“… A huge class of chemicals are called endocrine, meaning hormone, disrupting (messing up) chemicals, or EDCs. I like to call them hormone hackers because they sometimes pretend to be hacker hormones. They get in there, they hack the hormone system, they mess with it and it turns out that they’re in our daily lives in huge numbers.”
Phthalates are used to make plastic soft and flexible, so any time you see rubber tubing, you can assume there are phthalates. They’re hidden in foods like milk, too, due to the milking machines used by conventional dairies, which use extensive plastic tubing. A 2013 study published in Environment International found that milk was contaminated with phthalates at “several stages in the milk chain.”
In addition to the mechanical milking process, the milk may be contaminated due to phthalate-containing feed consumed by the cattle as well as packaging material.
Beyond milk, items such as vinyl raincoats, boots and shower curtains are high in phthalates, Swan said, and they’re also found in cosmetics, personal care and household products such as lipstick, nail polish, perfume, scented laundry soap and air fresheners because they help them retain scent and color.
They also enhance absorption, which is why they’re often added to lotions as well as to pesticides — to help them get absorbed into plants. “It’s hard to find things that don’t have these chemicals in them,” she said.
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Source:
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/shanna-swan-phthalates-chemicals-fertility/
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