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Scientists studying the impact of man-made chemicals on human health claim human males will be infertile by the middle of the next century if present industrial trends are maintained.
The culprits - chemicals which have the ability to mimic hormones, particularly the female sex hormone estrogen - are widespread in society and include pesticides (such as DDT), industrial chemicals (such as PCBs) and environmental pollutants such as dioxin. Most, though not all, of the estrogen-mimicking chemicals involve chlorine.
If you live in a large industrialised city take a look around you. What do you see beyond the bustle of modern commerce, people moving, working, surviving? All around you are cars, buses, lorries and trains. Look into the sky, chances are youll see an aeroplane taking people on holiday or perhaps a business trip. All these forms of transport are powered by a combustion process and built with industrial chemicals. What else do you see? Buildings, construction sites, machinery, glass, steel, concrete and wood. Look closer;- metals, plastics, electrical wires, pipes, paints, solvents, detergents. Go into shops you find clothes made from synthetic fibres, electronic appliances made with strong durable plastics, cosmetics made from chemicals, food grown with the aid of pesticides, tin cans whose lining leaches chemicals into the fish, meat, vegetables and sauces they contain. Visit the countryside where the vegetables and cereals and pulses are actually grown, where cattle and sheep graze on intensively farmed land, where the farmers have planted chemically treated disease resistant seeds and used herbicides, pesticides and fertilisers to increase the production of their crops All around us are the products of the chemical and oil industries.
Most western countries have had these products for more than half a century but all of us, wherever we live, have been exposed over the past 25 years to the effects of modern industrial chemicals, in the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breath. While we have been exposed to these chemicals, occupationally, environmentally and through food, some scientists have tried to determine the impact on our health. There has been a frequent, persistent argument, significantly from industry, that there is a safe level for all chemicals and as long as we take no more than "the threshold level" into our bodies we will not come to any harm. Many scientists who have gone against this line of thought have been ridiculed in the past! But not any more!
In 1979 a group of mothers in Taiwan unwittingly consumed PCB- contaminated rice oil over a period of ten months. It has now been found that boys born to these women have matured with reduced penises - thus providing the first direct evidence that polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are teratogenic (birth-defect producing) in humans.
The scientists who studied the 115 "yucheng" (oil-disease) children believe they were exposed to the chemical before and after birth via their mothers blood through the placenta while they were still in the womb and as young babies via their mothers milk. [1] The evidence that pesticides such as 2,4,5-T, Lindane and DDT, along with other industrial chemicals like PCBs, dioxin and many of the chemicals used in everyday household items, have the ability to affect the endocrine systems of animals - including humans, is becoming harder to ignore.
The simple easy-to-understand fact that 115 Taiwanese teenage boys have smaller penises than normal was the first confirmation that humans, as well as wildlife, are being similarly affected by exposure to "endocrine disrupting chemicals" such as DDT, PCBs, dioxin, and many more man- made chemicals.
The evidence is now accumulating that dozens of pesticides and other chemicals can mimic hormones, particularly the female sex hormone estrogen, and disrupt the endocrine system.
As with wildlife, it seems that the reproductive system of humans, predominantly the male, is more prone to damage from these chemicals. As well as reduced penis size, the Taiwanese teenagers had a variety of physical defects at birth ranging from; dark coloured heads, faces and genitals, to abnormal nails that were often dark and ridged, split or folded.
The Future is Dark - Male Sperm Count in "Steep Decline"
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