University of SAn Francisco Archives

June 17, 2024

New test finds more than 50 common chemicals may be linked to infertility

By Lydia Larsen

Using a new testing tool, US researchers said this week they have found more than 50 chemicals that pose a strong risk to fertility, including chemicals used in plastic water bottles and other common products.

The study, published Monday in Reproductive Toxicology, detailed a newly developed method for testing chemical toxicity, a tool the researchers said is badly needed because tens of thousands of chemicals used in household and commercial products have not been evaluated for their potential toxicities towards human health.

“This data shows that we need to be acting more quickly on some of these chemicals to which people are being exposed,” said Tracey Woodruff, a professor at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), and an author of the new study.

General fertility rates in the United States have been declining, hitting a historic low in 2022, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Researchers have known that certain types of chemicals are at least partly to blame for the declining fertility, but understanding the root causes of the problem has been difficult.

January 10, 2024

Doctors raise alarm on dropping global fertility rate, environmental pollutants cited

By Shannon Kelleher

Health researchers from around the world are sounding an alarm on a persistent drop in fertility rates, pointing to environmental pollutants among a wide range of factors that they argue need to be urgently addressed in a paper published Wednesday.

Both male and female reproductive health is deteriorating, especially in industrialized regions, suggesting important roles of environmental factors, such as endocrine-disrupting chemicals and pesticides, the authors of the paper state. Studies indicate that the global fertility rate is dropping, with 93% of all countries worldwide expected to dip below levels necessary to keep populations from shrinking by 2100.

The trend is driven, in part, by the impacts of exposure to toxic chemicals, as well as lifestyle factors such as smoking and obesity, according to the 11 researchers authoring the paper, which was published Wednesday in the journal Human Reproduction Update. The researchers – who come from multiple countries, including the United States, Australia, South Africa, Greece, and Denmark – reviewed dozens of studies in coming to their central conclusion that public policy, research and medical access must be stronger on the topic of fertility.

In conjunction with the publication of the paper, the International Federation of Fertility Societies (IFFS), which represents fertility societies in 65 countries, is launching a global campaign Wednesday seeking to push policymakers to make fertility care more affordable, accessible, and equitable, and to adopt policies that aid fertility, including reducing exposures to air pollution and other harmful chemicals linked to reproductive harm.

The paper says that “due to multiple societal and environmental changes, it is important to emphasize that globally between 48 million couples and 186 million individuals of reproductive age live with infertility.” They call infertility “a common chronic disease affecting many reproductive-age women and men.”

Data on the decline in total fertility rate around the world – the number of children each woman gives birth to, a critical factor in population growth – is “pretty remarkable,” said Tracey Woodruff, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine who was not involved in the paper.

“This is really an important issue because it impinges on people’s ability to choose pregnancy should they want to choose pregnancy,” said Woodruff

Among environmental pollutants, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, in particular, are a fertility concern, she said. “We know that the number and amount of them are increasing and we know that some of them can directly impact male and female reproductive health.”

It is difficult to fully calculate the role of environmental pollutants in infertility since “we only have data on a very small proportion of endocrine-disrupting chemicals to which we’re exposed,” she added.

About one in six people struggle with infertility, according to the World Health Organization. Research suggests sperm count in men has declined by 1.6% per year since 1973, although the impact on global fertility is unknown, the paper states.