2024-01-18 08:59:45
During his press conference on Tuesday January 16, Emmanuel Macron spoke of a future « grand plan » against infertility. Among the causes of difficulty conceiving a child, contact with chemical substances omnipresent in the domestic environment, the food chain or certain medications have been established beyond reasonable doubt by hundreds of scientific publications. However, the number and diversity of suspected molecules, the multiplicity of routes of exposure (food, inhalation, contact with the skin, etc.) as well as the sometimes long delays between exposure and recognition of infertility make estimating the extent of these effects and identifying the main products responsible are very complex.
The best-established effects relate to male fertility – globally, the average concentration of sperm in human semen has been halved in half a century, according to the latest analysis of all available data.
Published in June 2022, the first work attempting to establish a hierarchy of the main culprits for this decline indicates that the podium is occupied by bisphenols (present in rigid plastics and resins in contact with food), polychlorinated dioxins (emitted by household waste incinerators in particular) and certain phthalates (present in flexible plastics). Parabens (present in certain cosmetics and hygiene products), as well as paracetamol (a widely used painkiller) were also highlighted by the researchers.
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Be careful, however: the major effects of substances occur late, after exposure in utero, through mothers, during their pregnancy. These substances capable of disrupting the hormonal system (or “endocrine disruptors”) act in particular during the construction of the reproductive system, and reduce the future fertility of the unborn child. The time for politics is not the time for biology: regulatory measures taken today to reduce the exposure of populations to these endocrine disruptors would have significant effects on fertility for the next generation – although other effects positive health conditions can be revealed much earlier.
Agrotoxics and endometriosis
A summary of the available scientific literature, published in November 2023, showed, for its part, that exposure to pesticides from the organophosphate and carbamate family reduced the concentration of spermatozoa in the semen of individuals exposed throughout of their lives, and not just in utero.
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