Male Fertility: How Everyday Chemicals Are Destroying Sperm Counts In Humans And Animals By Alex Ford, University of Portsmouth and Gary Hutchison, Edinburgh Napier University via Natural Blaze
Within just a few generations, human sperm counts may decline to levels below those considered adequate for fertility. That’s the alarming claim made in epidemiologist Shanna Swan’s new book, “Countdown”, which assembles a raft of evidence to show that the sperm count of Western men has plunged by over 50% in less than 40 years.
That means men reading this article will on average have half the sperm count of their grandfathers. And, if the data is extrapolated forwards to its logical conclusion, men could have little or no reproductive capacity from 2060 onwards.
These are shocking claims, but they’re backed by a growing body of evidence that’s finding reproductive abnormalities and declining fertility in humans and wildlife worldwide.
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It’s difficult to say whether these trends will continue – or whether, if they do, they could lead to our extinction. But it’s clear that one of the main causes of these issues – the chemicals we’re surrounded by in our everyday lives – requires better regulation in order to protect our reproductive capacities, and those of the creatures with which we share our environment.
Declining sperm count
Studies revealing declining sperm counts in humans aren’t new. These issues first received global attention in the 1990s, though critics pointed to discrepancies in the way sperm counts were recorded to downplay the findings.
Then, in 2017, a more robust study that accounted for these discrepancies revealed that the sperm count of western men had declined by 50%-60% between 1973 and 2011, dropping on average 1%-2% per year. This is the “countdown” to which Shanna Swan refers.
The lower a man’s sperm count, the lower their chance of conceiving a child through sexual intercourse. The 2017 study warns that our grandchildren could possess sperm counts below the level considered suitable for successful conception – likely to force “most couples” to use assisted reproduction methods by 2045, according to Swan.
