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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 effects of these hormone mimicking chemicals doesnt stop at reducing the size of the penis. Research at the Medical Research Councils Reproductive Biology Unit at Edinburgh and at Brunel University, Middlesex, is among the latest to find new evidence of a link between declining male fertility and synthetic "hormone mimicking chemicals".[2]

"The balance of the debate is shifting in support of the theory that this group of chemicals which is being pumped into the environment is having an effect on our reproductive system. "I think we should follow the lead of Sweden and Denmark and start to phase out these chemicals. The issue will certainly not go away," said Dr Charles Tyler, fertility researcher at Brunels University.

This issue - as to whether chemicals are affecting fertility - is not quite as new as most people believe. As long ago as 1978 scientists working for the Thames Water Authority discovered that 40% of the male roach fish in the River Lee, Hertforshire were hermaphroditic (that is having both male and female sex organs) and were sterile. It was believed that chemicals, notably estrogen - probably contained in contraceptive pills, in the effluent from the Mill Green sewage works which treats industrial and domestic waste was to blame.

Strangely this research was deliberately kept under wrap with the findings not made available for other scientists to study.[3] Defending this secrecy John Sexton, Director of Environment and Science at Thames Water Utilities Ltd, said the "first findings were of very little consequence and the whole works should be completed by government departments."[3]

This view was not shared by scientist Paul Johnson of Exeter University who said, "science and the pursuit of science are all about evaluating problems and expanding the knowledge base. If the results of works are not published its impossible to make progress"[3] In 1982 scientists at Liverpool University, on a commission from Thames Water Authority, fed sewage effluent to rats in order to monitor its effects. Initial results suggested major hormonal effects, including disruption of the reproductive cycle. Later tests however did not confirm this. [3]

In 1987 the Department of the Environment and the Fisheries Ministry (MAFF) commissioned a survey of rainbow trout in 31 rivers in England & Wales. The fish were situated in cages near sewage effluent outlets. There was something estrogenic at all the outlets.[3]

John Sexton maintained the amount of hormone found in the drinking water supplied by the Thames Water Authority posed no danger to health because "the body produces the same hormones, so adjusts itself".[3]

"Man made hormones [as produced by hormone mimicking chemicals] are different from natural hormones," said Dr Vyvyan Howard of the Department of Fetal and Infant Pathology at the University of Liverpool. "They are persistent. Natural hormones will be destroyed within the body in half an hour. Man-made hormones stay in the body for years and years switching on enzyme systems." Hormones are incredibly potent at amounts as low as fractions of a millionth of a gram. "If it affects those fish, then its affecting us," he added. "We have had a very long time to adjust to natural estrogen", said Prof Carlos Sonnenschein.[16]

Thames Water Authority admitted they were concerned about "the implications the findings might have for the people downstream (ie. north London) who rely on the river Lee for the source of their drinking water". This has not stopped the British government successfully putting pressure on the European Union to throw away the strict directives on drinking water, replacing them with new regulations that are less restrictive on some substances, specifically pesticides - which have been implicated by a host of scientists as environmental estrogens.

Once again the British government is showing an appalling lack of commitment to the "precautionary principle" enshrined in international protocols and exhibiting an alarming indifference to the health of the British public.

It is thought by many that pressure to relax the standards of chemical contamination in drinking water by the government is a result of pressure from outside the water industry. To meet the proposed stricter regulations would have required major expenditure by the companies concerned and this would have made a big dent in their profits and reduced the price of their shares.

"Our job is to ensure that if a standard like that is imposed then it is necessary. If it is necessary then we would fully subscribed to it and support it", said John Sexton, "but all the recent evidence is suggesting that the standard at the moment is too strict and the money being spent by us putting in additional treatment in could be better spent in other areas."

"Even though some of the pesticides and herbicides have been shown to have estrogenic activity?" He was asked.

"Oh yes, having estrogenic activity per se isnt a problem, the question we have to look at is what substance, at what levels?"[3] That certain chemicals are capable of mimicking sex hormones appears to have been accepted by a large body of the scientific community as the evidence continues to mount up. Man-made chemicals such as organochlorine pesticides (DDT, for example, which was used in large quantities until the 1960s when it was banned or restricted in the western world) head the list of environmental estrogens. The Danish Environmental Protection Agency, focusing on the work of several scientists studying this problem, identified 27 classes of pesticide in common use as environmental estrogens. PCBs (used as industrial chemicals in capacitators and transformers) are among five classes of industrial chemicals now known as environmental estrogens.

Alkylphenol polyethoxlates (nonionic surfactants used in detergents, emulsifiers, wetting agents and dispersing agents in household products and in agricultural and industrial products such as herbicides and paints; also used as spermicides in contraceptive foams, jellies and creams) and phthalate esters (used in most commercially available plastics, including polyvinyl chloride [PVC]) are other chemicals responsible for xenoestrogenic behaviour. Environmental pollutants such as dioxins and furans (unwanted by-products from the combustion of chlorinated hydrocarbons) have also been implicated.[14]

Chemicals found in food wrapping, tin cans and even some face creams and dental fillings have also come under the microscope.[2]

This source of exposure to estrogenic chemicals via food was discovered when Spanish scientists found that bisphenol-A leaches from the inner lining of food cans into many vegetables. Also worrying is the fact that this chemical also leaches out of plastic babies bottles. [15]

Dr Richard Sharpe of the Medical Councils Reproductive Biology unit in Edinburgh announced in July 1995 that he had experimental evidence that prolonged exposure to low levels of phthalates, comparable to those found in human diets, could cause a reduction in testis size in developing rats. Any reduction in testis size would be expected to reduce sperm production.[4]

Two recent studies have found that sperm count in men has declined precipitously over the past 20 years. [5] A report in the British Medical Journal in August 1994 comparing men of similar ages, sperm count in 3729 Scottish men had declined 41% among those born in 1969 compared to those born in 1941. The New England Journal of Medicine reported in February 1995 that sperm count has declined 33% during the past 20 years among a study-population of 1,351 healthy, fertile men in Paris, France.

Researchers at the North London Royal Free Hospital, measuring the pregnancy rate between 1977 and 1989, found, despite improved techniques, it had fallen. Jean Ginsburgh, Consultant Endocrinologist at the hospital, said: "When checking sperm count we found that the men were producing 96 million [sperm per cubic centimetre] which is a decent sperm count, but we found we had a higher proportion of poor or no motiIity and the quantity and quality had declined." She is convinced the cause is environmental, "something very general that every body takes, water, food, bread, milk. [3]

Alan Bennett, a male infertility specialist in Albany, New York State, where men are suffering major reproductive problems said: "Its rare in my practice to find a man with a sperm count of 100 million cc. I see a lot of men who are normal with a sperm count of 30 to 40 million. In the US we now have a normal count of 20 million, whereas when I was training it was 60 million, so in the twenty five years Ive been practising its gone from 60 million to 20 million, that says something."[3]

In 1992 a historical analysis of 62 separate sperm-count studies by Elisabeth Carlsen concluded that sperm count among men throughout the industrialised world has declined by about 50% in the last 50 years.[6] Two years later these findings were challenged by researchers who said it might have been caused by Carlsens erroneous choice of statistical methods, and not by an actual decline in sperm count.[6]

The chemical industry is attempting to undermine the scientific evidence and its scientists will no doubt be quick will be quick to point out that no one knows for sure what is causing the apparent decline in sperm count among men. But the report from MRC Reproductive Unit goes a long way to laying the blame at this industrys doorstep.

It is still remotely possible that the decline is not real. For example, these 62 studies may have examined men who are not typical of the general population and various factors that influence sperm count may not have been fully accounted for.[7]

As Carlsen and her co-workers said in 1994, defending their 1992 conclusion:

"The most cautious conclusion that can be drawn from the existing data is that semen quality has declined significantly between 1940 and 1990."

Various hypothesis have been suggested as to the cause of the decline but the one getting the most attention is that hormone mimicking chemicals in the mothers blood is affecting the male child before it is born. This hypothesis suggests that the male child is being born with fewer Sertoli cells. These are the cells that cause the production of sperm after puberty. Reduced numbers of Sertoli cells (and reduced sperm count) have been observed in the male offspring of estrogen- exposed pregnant rats.[8]

Researchers studied a group of 1,351 healthy men in Paris who had donated sperm to a sperm bank maintained by a hospital, starting in 1973. Each of the men had fathered at least one child. One percent of the men were farmers and 16% were manual labourers; 40% were classified as "technicians" and 38 % as "executives." From 1973 to 1992 their average (mean) sperm count declined at the rate of 2.1% each year from 89 million per cubic centimetre (cc) to 60 million per cc. During the same period the proportion of motile sperm (that is sperm able to swim) declined at a rate of 0.6% per year, and the proportion of "normal" sperm (compared to misshapen sperm) declined at the rate of 0.5%. In sum, the quantity and quality of sperm declined simultaneously.

This study answers some of the concerns of some of the critics of Carlsens 1992 study. Those critics charged that abstinence from sex causes an increase in sperm numbers and a decrease in sperm with good motility and Carlsen could not control for that. The study in Paris took into account the length of abstinence before samples were taken. It also controlled for age and for the year of birth. The decline in sperm quantity and quality, linked to year of birth, was still observable after controlling for length of abstinence and age.

Among the Paris group, a subgroup of 382 men in a narrow age range (28 to 37 years) was chosen for special analysis; they had all reported a similar period of abstinence (3 to 4 days). Among this group, there was a clear decline in sperm count from 1973 to 1992; from 101 million per cc to 50 million per cc, a reduction by half. The average 30-year-old born in 1945 would have a count of 102 million per cc; the average 30-year-old born in 1962 would have a count of 51 million. "We conclude," the French researchers said, "that there has been a true decline in the quality of semen during the past 20 years, since the characteristics of semen from a fertile man of a given age in 1992 were significantly poorer than those of a fertile man of the same age in 1973."

The Scottish researchers completed their study in response to criticism of Carlsens 1992 analysis of 62 sperm-count studies showing a 50% reduction in 50 years. They had records for 3,729 semen donors born between 1940 and 1969. They examined these by statistical techniques chosen to avoid the (controversial) criticisms that had been levelled at Carlsens work. They found an apparent decline in sperm count from 128 million per cc (in men born in the 1940s) to 75 million in men born in the late 1960s, a 41% loss in a single generation.

"Thus we do not accept that the evidence for a fall in sperm concentrations is unconvincing," they concluded. Stewart Irvine, a gynaecologist at the Medical Research Councils Reproductive Biology Unit in Edinburgh, Scotland, who studied sperm production of Scottish males told Lawrence Wright, writing for the New Yorker: "I had a colleague visiting from Australia, and he had with him a laptop computer with lots of data from infertile couples. He said, Im sure these sperm count drops are rubbish. Im sure there are other explanations for it. And I said, Well, just take your data and plot it by year of birth and see what you get. He got the same result." [12, pg 46]

Several researchers have noted that the decline in sperm quality (count, motility and normal shape) coincides with an increasing incidence of abnormalities of the male genital tract, including testicular cancer and cryptorchidism (undescended testicles) in various countries.[9] Such abnormalities have doubled in frequency during the past 30 years in many parts of the world.[10]

In Scotland, for example, testicular cancer has doubled since 1960 and is striking a younger population (ages 15 to 44) every year. The cause of these increasing abnormalities remains a mystery.

One clue that may tie all the threads of evidence together is the record of what happened to the sons of women who were given a synthetic hormone, diethylstilbestrol (DES), during the fifties and sixties. About a million women were given DES as a "morning after" pill to reduce the likelihood of pregnancy. Their sons have shown an increase in genital tract abnormalities AND reduced sperm count.

Data from animal experiments has confirmed that chemicals effect sexual development. Pregnant rats given a single, very low, dose of dioxin on the 15th day of gestation, produce male offspring that have genital tract abnormalities (particularly undescended testicles) and a low sperm count after they mature.[11]

The New England Medical Journal stated in February 1995 that the significant decline in the concentration of sperm during the past 20 years in the Paris area,may be related to an interaction of the age of the [sperm] donors and the chronologic period [in which they are living] that in turn could implicate factors affecting all the inhabitants of an area, such as the water supply or environmental pollution.

Danish pediatric endocrinologist (hormone specialist) Niels E. Skakkebaek said that in the late 1980s he and his colleagues had been wondering why it was so difficult for sperm banks to establish a core of donors. "In some areas of Denmark, they were having to recruit ten potential donors to find one with good semen quality." In 1990 Skakkebaek studied sperm quality in Danish men starting with men working in what is classed as "non-hazardous" jobs such as office workers and labourers who did not work directly with industrial chemicals or pesticides. These were men thought to be quite healthy.

For decades it had been believed that the average man produced about a hundred million sperm per millilitre of semen, of which about 20% was expected to be immobile. Skakkebaek reported that 84% of the Danish men he studied had sperm quality below the standards set by the World Health Organisation (WHO). The men themselves seemed normal in every other respect.[12, pg43]

On the basis of the worlds medical literature, Skakkebaek calculates that in 1940 the average sperm count was 113 million per millilitre, and that 50 years later it had fallen to 66 million.[12, pg44] Still more serious is a three-fold increase in men whose sperm count was below 20 million - the point at which their fertility would be jeopardised.

Skakkebaek has gained a wide reputation for his studies on testicular cancer which in the past 50 years has become a particularly common disease in Denmark with nearly one in 100 men affected. In his paediatric practice Skakkebaek was seeing many boys with malformed genitals. A study in 1984 of 2,000 Danish school boys found that 7% of them had one or both testicles lodged inside their bodies - a condition that may lead to sterility and a higher risk of testicular cancer. Skakkebaek sees the decline in sperm count as only one part of a much larger assault on the male reproductive organs, high rates of testicular cancer, undescended testicles, hypospadias (a condition in which the urethral opening in on the underside of the penis not on the tip) are all increasing.

Pierre Jouannet, director of the Centre dEtude et de Conservation des Oeufs et du Sperme in Paris, simply did not believe Skakkebaeks conclusions. Jouannet had data on 1,350 Parisian men, all of whom had fathered at least one child and therefore were of proven fertility, so he analysed them, expecting to refute Skakkebaeks studies. To his astonishment he found that sperm counts in his group had dropped steadily at 2% per year for the past 20 years; in 1973 the average count was 89 million per millilitre and in 1992 it was 60 million.[12, pg45] The expected sperm count for a Parisian man born in 1945 was 102 million, whereas the count of those born in 1962 was exactly half that number.[12, pg45]

Jouannet had been convinced. And when he projects the decline into the future he sees serious trouble for the human species. At the present rate of decline, he reported gravely, "it will take 70 or 80 years before it [sperm count] goes to zero".[12, pg45] Difficulty conceiving occurs at 20 million or less; sterility occurs at five million or less.

In the United States the number of donors with good-quality sperm has become distressingly low. Back in 1981 researchers at the Washington Fertility Study Centre reported that the sperm count of their donors, who were largely medical students, had suffered a steady decline over the previous eight years. The researchers worried that, if the decline continued at the same rate, within the decade there would be no potential donors who could meet the approved or recommended standards.

The fact is that the number of morphologically normal sperm [meaning sperm with a normal shape] produced by the average man has dropped below the level of those of a hamster, which has testicles a fraction the size of a mans.[12,pg44]

In the United States, where infertility is defined as failure to produce a child after a year of normal sex, according to the National Centre for Health Statistics, the percentage of infertile couples has risen from 14.4 in 1965 to 18.5 in 1995.[12, pg44]

There has been little published research comparing racial and ethnic sperm counts, particularly in Africa and many Third World countries. But the studies that we do have show low counts nearly everywhere: the latest count in Nigeria is 64 million per millilitre; in Pakistan, 79.5 million; in Germany, 78 million; in Hong Kong, 62 million.[12, pgs44-45]

"Infertility is definitely going up," said Dr. Marc Goldstein, director of the Centre for Male Reproductive Medicine at New York Hospital. "I see it in my practice. There is a decline in fertility in men and an increase in infertility in older couples. Studies show an increase in infertility from 11% to 16 % in all married couples." He believes part of it may be life style: marijuana, cocaine, alcohol, and sexually transmitted diseases can all reduce sperm counts.[13, pg80] But wildlife do not smoke marijuana or drink alcohol and there are numerous reports of reproductive problems caused by chlorinated chemicals in wildlife. It is something more fundamental than life style, Skakkebaek observed. Whatever is happening to men, he noted, some part of it must take place during the early stages of human development - in the womb or else shortly after birth - because damage to the male urogenital system is evident in certain very young patients.[12, pg47]

Sharpe concurred the decline in sperm is linked to some event that affects the endocrine system which governs the bodys hormones. This must happen, he said, either in the womb or shortly after birth. "I have absolutely no doubt this is the most important time in your life, certainly if youre a male," he said. "This is when your sperm- producing capacity as an adult is settled once and for all."[12,pg48]

Changes in life style wont help men whose sperm producing capacity has been crippled at birth.

In a series of experiments, Sharpe exposed pregnant rats to "minute quantities" of DES and to other synthetic estrogens; he showed a 5% to 15% decline in sperm count in male offspring when they matured. Philippe Grandjean, a professor of environmental medicine at Odense University in Denmark summarised the situation in an interview with Lawrence Wright: "We thought in the past that these toxic substances would act on a target - an enzyme or DNA or the cell membrane, or something like that. But what these endocrinologists have suggested to us is that industrial chemicals can actually mimic hormones. It looks as if the receptors arent very good at recognising whats a hormone and whats not a hormone - perhaps because they were never previously challenged. These receptors have been kept almost unchanged in the mammalian world, because they worked. They functioned very well. But in this century we have generated all these new chemicals and injected them into the environment, suddenly the body is exposed to new substances that in some cases can interact with that receptor. The human species is totally unprepared for this, because it has never happened before. I think the perspective is both very exciting and very, very frightening."[12, pg51]

Most, though not all, of the estrogen-mimicking chemicals involve chlorine.

Day 56 is the day sexual differentiation sets in the human but what happens during gestation from that period on is in many ways just as critical as what happened before those first 56 days. The secondary sex organs of a young man are developing right through until he reaches puberty.

If, as Theo Colborn of the World Wide Fund. has theorised, the number of chemicals that can harm reproduction add up to hundreds, if not thousands, the only way to regulate them all will be to "reverse the onus" that now falls on individuals to prove they have been harmed by a toxic substance. We now have between 300 and 500 chemicals in our bodies in measurable amounts that werent there 40 years ago" she said.

"The responsibility should not be on the people exposed to chemicals to prove they have been hurt," said David LaRoche, the secretary of the International Joint Commission (IJC). "The responsibility should be on industry to prove that chemicals cause no harm."[13, pg84]

Professor Carlos Sonnenschein (Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston ) believes most chemical manufactures have alternative inexpensive chemicals they could use. "When we discover a product contains estrogen disruptors we should stop and look to alternatives." [16]

"I have heard that the Chlorine Chemistry Councils budget is around $100 million," Gordon Durnil former chairman of the IJC.told Esquire reporter Daniel Pinchbeck. Durnil "Its a lot of money. You could use it to buy some research. Why dont they do some research to say what they are doing is safe?" Durnil asked.[13, pg84]

Unfortunately, the truth about the sperm count is that it is under attack from many different sources. Earl Gray, a senior research biologist with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), testified before Congress in 1993 that; "Our studies [in rats] show that a single dose of dioxin administered during pregnancy permanently reduces sperm counts in the males by about 60 per cent."[12, pg53]

"With sperm counts, Ive been more impressed by the dioxins and the PCBs than by the estrogens and anti-androgens," Gray said. "We get surprising effects at relatively low doses."[13, pg53]

"Probably half the jobs in the world are associated in some way with chlorine," said Durnil. "As a society, we are going to have to confront our dependence on this chemical."[13, pg82]

Thus, although it remains a hypothesis that estrogen-mimicking chemicals are causing the observed tract, in sperm reduction it is a hypothesis that is being taken very seriously by a large number of scientists world wide. They are working aggressively to confirm its truth or falsehood. It is after all, an important matter for the future of the human species.

"When we discover a product contains estrogen disruptors we should stop and look to alternatives."

References:
[1] Marguerite Holloway, "Dioxin Indictment," Scientific American Vol. 270 (January 1994), pg 25.
[2] The Observer 25 February 1996
[3] Dispatches "Down for the Count.
[4] ENDS Report 246 July 1995 pg3
[5] Jacques Auger and others, Decline in Semen Quality Among fertile Men in Paris during the past 20 years," NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE Vol. 332, No. 5 (February 2, 1995), pgs.281-285. And: D. Stewart Irvine, "Falling sperm quality," BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL Vol. 309 (August 13, 1994), pg. 476.
[6] Elisabeth Carlsen and others, "Evidence for decreasing quality of semen during past 50 years," BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL Vol. 305 (1992), pgs. 609-613.
[7] Richard J. Sherins, "Are Semen Quality and Male Fertility Changing?" NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL Vol. 332 No 5 (Feb.2, 1995), pg. 327, says that studies conducted so far have not properly controlled for differences in age, abstinence before semen analysis, ejaculatory frequency, and the number of samples analysed per person, all of which can effect sperm count. Another author who has registered scepticism of the 1992 findings is Stephen Farrow, "Falling sperm quality: fact or fiction?" BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL Vol. 309, No. 6946 (July 2, 1994), pgs. 1-2.
[8] A. Giwercman and N.E. Skakkebaek, "The human testisan organ at risk?" INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ANDROLOGY Vol. 15 (1992), pgs. 373-375. And: Richard M. Sharpe and Niels E. Skakkebaek, "Are oestrogen involved in falling sperm counts and disorders of the male reproductive tract?" THE LANCET Vol. 341 (May 29, 1993), pgs. 1392-1395. And: R. M. Sharpe, " Declining sperm counts in men - is there an endocrine cause?" JOURNAL OF ENDOCRINOLOGY, Vol. 136 (1993), pgs. 357-360.
[9] A. Giwercman, cited above in note 8; and see Peter Boyle and others, "Changes in Testicular Cancer in Scotland," EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CANCER AND CLINICAL ONCOLOGY Vol. 23 (1987), pgs. 827-830. And: A. Giwercman and others, "Evidence for increasing evidence of abnormalities of the human testis: a review," ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH PERSPECTIVES Vol. 101, Supplement 2 (1993), pgs. 65-71.
[10] See Sharpe and Skakkebaek, cited above.in note 8
[11] Thomas A. Mably and others, "IN UTERO and Lactational Exposure of Male Rats to 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-P-dioxin. 3. Effects on Spermatogenesis and Reproductive Capability." TOXICOLOGY AND APPLIED PHARMACOLOGY Vol. 114 (May, 1992), pgs. 118-126.
[12] Lawrence Wright, "Silent Sperm," NEW YORKER (January 15, 1996), pgs. 42-48, 50-53, 55.
[13] Daniel Pinchbeck, "Downward Motility," ESQUIRE (January 1996), pgs. 79-84. [14] Danish Environmental Protection Agency, Male Reproductive Health and environmental chemicals with estrogenic effects. April 1995. Miljo- Kopenhawn, Denmark.
[15] Prof Anna Soto, Lecture, Liverpool University 7 May 1996.
[16] Lecture, Liverpool University 7 May 1996 Much of this feature was adapted from RACHELS Environment & Health Weekly #372 #432 & #477 from the Environmental Research Foundation (see below). The ERF provides a electronic version of RACHELS ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY free of charge even though it them costs considerable time and money to produce it.. You can help by making a contribution (anything you can afford, whether 5 or 500) to: Environmental Research Foundation, P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403-7036 Tel: (410) 263-1584; Fax: (410) 263-8944. Internet: erf@igc.apc.org.

For more information on declining sperm contact Communities Against Toxics Article taken from ToxCat ISSN 1355 5707 Volume 2 - 2 Spring 96
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