A cocktail of chemicals measured in people's bodies has been linked to falling semen quality.
The study found that the combinations of the chemicals were up to 100 times more harmful than the safe ones.
Scientists said thatBPA was the highest risk. Milk and canned food contain a chemical that can be found in the lining of the container. The study results are relevant for expectant mothers because the key steps for healthy male sexual development occur during pregnancies.
The sperm counts in western countries have gone down in the last 40 years. Penis malformation, breast cancer and undescended testes are some of the male sexual disorders that have increased. The study sheds new light on the potential for chemical cocktails to cause harm by disrupting hormones.
The study team led by Prof Kortenkamp at Brunel University London were astonished by the hazard index. The team was surprised thatBPA was the most worrying chemical, as previous work had focused on other chemicals.
According to the Guardian, Kortenkamp said the research would allow better studies to be done in people. There is no reason for the regulatory action to be delayed.
A research published in the journal Environment International looked at the levels of nine chemicals in urine samples from almost 100 Danes. The European Food Standards Agency data was used to estimate people's exposure to 20 other chemicals.
The levels of exposure were derived from the scientific literature. This gave a measure of the potential impact of each chemical, which were then added together using an established method to produce an overall risk measure for each of the men.
The most exposed men in the study had levels 100 times greater than acceptable values and the average was 17 times. The researchers found alarming exceedances of acceptable combined exposures.
The researchers were able to rank the chemicals and see which ones were the biggest risk. The exposure to acceptable levels was not brought down by the removal ofBPA.
Paracetamol has been shown to cause a decline in sperm quality in laboratory animals and increase the risk of non-descending testes in boys born to mothers who used the painkiller during their pregnancies. According to a review backed by 90 scientists, pregnant women should be warned if they are uncertain about the use of paracetamol.
There were uncertainties in the analyses. The data for the years 2009-2010 was used and it shows that exposure to other bisphenols has increased. Young women may not have the same exposure to chemicals as young men.
In view of the many chemicals humans are exposed to, these constraints almost certainly mean that we have underestimated mixture risks. The data is limited so the study did not include so-called "forever chemicals". Semen can be affected by air pollution.
The sperm count is on the decline.
The impact of chemicals as well as other causes for falling sperm quality have been proposed by scientists.
Kortenkamp said that chemicals aren't the only factor. Eating a lot of fat is not good for semen quality.
Prof Hagai Levine, at the Hebrew University School of Public Health, Israel, said, "This is a unique study and adds to the growing evidence on the adverse impact on human reproduction." The causes of male reproduction disruption need to be studied.
The University of Edinburgh's Prof Richard Sharpe is not convinced that exposure to weakly endocrine-active environmental chemicals plays an important role in the decline in sperm counts. There isn't direct evidence that most of the chemicals assessed caused harm to human testis development.
He believes that falling sperm counts are most likely impacting in early pregnancies. He said that a high-fat, processed diet was both harmful and the main source of the chemicals made it hard to distinguish which was to blame. It is1-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-6556
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