Water Pollution Is Making Men Less Fertile
In a very creepy Children of Men kind of way, this recent development in the state of our world’s water resources could be the first step to lower fecundity in humans, which yes, in an extreme case like the world of 2027 in Children of Men, could lead to diminished birth rates.
Guess I’ll stop worrying about overpopulation…
A British joint-research project finds that increasing numbers of new chemicals such as those used in pharmaceuticals and fertilizers — the very things that make life worth living, am I right? — are showing up in our water supplies. These chemicals may have a rather harmful and decidedly less fruitful side effect on a man’s reproductive system.
And on a fish’s reproductive system. Studies in the past have shown that male fish are being “feminized” due to female hormones in the water supply. Certain hormones in the water are turning the fish into girl fish, kind of in some cases and literally in others. These estrogens are making it through the water treatment process after passing through women taking birth-control pills. To be fair, chemicals that act like estrogen also have the same effect on fish, and those chemicals are coming from industrial manufacturing.
Now, researchers are finding new chemicals they are calling “anti-androgens.” These are acting much like the estrogen and faux-estrogen. Androgens are male hormones like testosterone, and serve to support sperm production.
In fact, the researchers says they really don’t know where some of these chemicals are coming from.
“We have identified a new group of chemicals in our study on fish, but do not know where they are coming from. A principal aim of our work is now to identify the source of these pollutants and work with regulators and relevant industry to test the effects of a mixture of these chemicals and the already known environmental estrogens and help protect environmental health.” [quote from Lead author on the research paper, Dr Susan Jobling at Brunel University's Institute for the Environment]
Senior author Professor Charles Tyler of the University of Exeter said: “Our research shows that a much wider range of chemicals than we previously thought is leading to hormone disruption in fish. This means that the pollutants causing these problems are likely to be coming from a wide variety of sources.
“Our findings also strengthen the argument for the cocktail of chemicals in our water leading to hormone disruption in fish, and contributing to the rise in male reproductive problems. There are likely to be many reasons behind the rise in male fertility problems in humans, but these findings could reveal one, previously unknown, factor.”–SPX via TerraDaily
These anti-androgens are known to cause a condition called testicular dysgenesis syndrome. Even the name tells us what is going on — dys means “ill” and genesis means “birth“. The anti-androgens can cause developmental damage to the reproductive system in embryos and the syndrome is becoming more and more common unfortunately.
We are what we drink. The ultimate anti-androgens, Women.
Yet more bad news for our water supply.
fertility, reproductive health, men, mens health, water, water pollution, androgens, anti-androgens, fish, feminizing, fecundity, Children of Men, overpopulation, sperm, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, hormones, estrogen, testosterone, manufacturing, chemicals, water treatment, testicular dysgenesis syndrome, embryos, developmental damage
February 19th, 2009 at 11:11 am
there was a good article about this in the nation geogrpahic last month. The germs are killing the sperm.
March 23rd, 2009 at 7:35 pm
[...] Microsoft. They seem to be following the rule book of the FDA when it comes to pharmaceuticals. Just get it on the shelves, and worry about problems [...]