According to an epidemiologist, the sperm count within the average man has decreased, and penises are getting smaller.
According to The Guardian, a new book titled Countdown, written by Shanna Swan, shows sperm counts have dropped almost 60 percent since 1973. Swan’s research also suggests that sperm counts could drop down to zero percent by 2045. Swan is an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York,
The root of the problem, the study claims, are chemicals found in several everyday items, including food wrappings, plastic containers, shampoos, carpeting, and more. The substances are referred to as PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” because they don’t breakdown in the environment or the human body.
Swan’s book also states that women are being affected by these chemicals as well. “In some parts of the world, the average twentysomething woman today is less fertile than her grandmother was at 35,” Swan writes. Swan says that the average man today has about half the amount of sperm as his grandfather.
“The current state of reproductive affairs can’t continue much longer without threatening human survival,” writes Swan, adding: “It’s a global existential crisis.”
Her study also highlights previous research that the chemicals are affecting the average size of the male penis. Swan says that the chemicals disrupt the male hormone, leading to a “reduction of semen quality, testicular volume, and penile length.”
In response to this, the state of Washington has passed the Pollution Prevention for Our Future Act, which “directs state agencies to address classes of chemicals and moves away from a chemical by chemical approach, which has historically resulted in companies switching to equally bad or worse substitutes. The first chemical classes to be addressed in products include phthalates, PFAS, PCBs, alkylphenol ethoxylate and bisphenol compounds, and organohalogen flame retardants.”
