Endocrine disrupters - chemicals in the environment hurt fertility and men and women
There are a number of chemicals in the environment due to polluted water and pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers that may travel through the air and get into the soil.Many of these chemicals are endocrine disrupters which affect hormone production. In women they may mimic estrogens and in men they may hinder sperm production.
See my video on environmental threats to fertility at www.getpregnantover40.com
Although the study cited in the following article was done on animals, it's logical to assume that the findings may be true for humans as well. It reinforces how careful you should be about what you eat and what toxins you're exposed to. Read more:
Over recent decades there has been a dramatic increase in the production of industrial and agricultural chemicals and heavy metals, and this has coincided with widespread reports of breeding problems in wild animals. Fertility also appears to be declining among humans and there has also been a rise in reproductive defects observed in newborn babies.
Until now, most studies have looked at a short-lived exposure to high doses of single compounds, and have usually done so in mice and rats. Dr. Fowler and his colleagues decided to study the effect of long-term, low-level exposure to a cocktail of chemicals and heavy metals in an animal which has a long pregnancy, therefore better replicating the situation in the human.
"Our 'real life' model exposed developing sheep fetuses by pasturing their mothers on fields fertilised with either inorganic fertiliser, the control group, or, in the case of the treatment group, with digested human sewage sludge, before and during pregnancy", said Dr. Fowler.
"We examined the ovaries from the fetuses at day 110 of gestation, the equivalent of week 27 in a human pregnancy, and found that the ovaries from the fetuses where the mother was grazing the sewage sludge fields contained fewer eggs and also a number of protein abnormalities. These differences could have implications for problems such as cancer in later life."
from:
www.medicalnewstoday.com)
