Climate change is rightly cited as an environmental crisis that could lead to human extinction. Yet there is another pollution issue, indirectly related, that could make it literally impossible for human beings to reproduce.
I am talking, of course, about plastic pollution.
Dr. Shanna Swan, a professor of environmental medicine and public health at Mount Sinai school of medicine in New York City, has a new book out called “Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race.” In it she describes how various chemicals commonly found in plastic products are leading to a decline in fertility. The most striking example of this is in dropping sperm counts; if you have fewer than 15 million sperm per milliliter of semen, you are considered to have a low sperm count. Human beings are rapidly reaching that point, as Swan demonstrates in her book.
Salon spoke with her about this issue over the phone; as always, this interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What is the thesis of your book?
The thesis of my book is that reproductive health in men and women has been declining dramatically at least over the past 40 years, and that a major part of that decline is linked to everyday exposure to chemicals in the environment that can affect our hormone system. There’s a lot in there and we can spread that all out, but that’s the overall
— source salon.com | Matthew Rozsa | Apr 4, 2021