Infertility is rising across Europe. Exposure to chemicals could be a major contributory factor, experts think.
Roughly one third of infertility remains 'unexplained,' a third is female-related - apart from the fact that women are trying for children later, sexually transmitted infections and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are on the rise - and the rest is male-related.
There is an alarming drop in sperm counts. 'Something has changed in the past 20 or 30 years,' says Allan Pacey, the secretary of the British Fertility Society. 'We don't know what it is, but we need to be very concerned.'
Many modern-day habits are known to play a part - drinking, smoking and overeating for example. What we don't know is whether there's something else going on - in the air we breathe, water we drink and food we eat. The thousands of invisible chemicals that have poured into our world since the Second World War to make life non-breakable, non-stick and flame-resistant are being linked to miscarriage, PCOS, endometriosis, and low sperm counts - as well as testicular cancer, breast cancer and prostate cancer.
Shanna Swan, an epidemiologist at the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry in America, has spent the past 20 years studying environmental reproductive risks. 'There's no question now that chemical exposures impair fertility,' she says. 'We have 80,000 chemicals in circulation and when we look we see strong evidence that comes out constantly in scientific journals and in small conferences. Yet somehow we haven't reached the tipping point where people take notice. With global warming, it took 20 years. The American surgeon general said in 1964 that cigarettes caused cancer. How long did that take to get around? Maybe it takes a disaster - and I think impairing our ability to reproduce is potentially the most serious disaster there is.'
