Scientists have spent decades trying to untangle puzzling questions over falling sperm concentrations. A new analysis of 25 studies of pesticides shows a clear connection, researchers say.

A prolonged decline in male fertility in the form of sperm concentrations appears to be connected to the use of pesticides, according to a study published Wednesday.

Researchers compiled, rated and reviewed the results of 25 studies of certain pesticides and male fertility and found that men who had been exposed to certain classes of pesticides had significantly lower sperm concentrations. The study, published Wednesday in Environmental Health Perspectives, included data from more than 1,700 men and spanned several decades.

“No matter how we looked at the analysis and results, we saw a persistent association between increasing levels of insecticide and decreases in sperm concentration,” said study author Melissa Perry, who is an environmental epidemiologist and the dean of the College of Public Health at George Mason University. “I would hope this study would get the attention of regulators seeking to make decisions to keep the public safe from inadvertent, unplanned impacts of insecticides.”

  • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    432·
    1 year ago

    Most of the studies were about people applying the insecticides, not the general public. And it’s well known that insecticides are far from safe, if you aren’t wearing PPE around them you’re going to pay a price.

    • Vilian@lemmy.ca
      272·
      1 year ago

      the male fertily and sperm count are skrinking on every male, not only the ones applying insecticides

      • wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one
        12·
        1 year ago

        the comment is saying our research is only done on people directly applying the spray. As in, tests for safe levels of exposure.

      • cannache@slrpnk.net
        2·
        1 year ago

        Imagine if your sperm count spiked from insecticide exposure haha, what a plot twist that would be

    • Phlogiston@lemmy.world
      52·
      1 year ago

      Even if this was ‘only’ an issue for the people that make all our food its an important issue and pesticide drift is a thing. so its also an issue for the people that live near where our food is made

      • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
        5·
        1 year ago

        Not necessarily. The level or concentration of it really matters.

        Radiation is a good example of this. Standing next to a leaking nuclear reactor would be very, very bad for instance. But we also get hit with radiation everyday from naturally occuring sources. Radon is naturally in the air, and anything with carbon will have the teeniest amount of a radioactive carbon isotope too. Hell, even X rays with proper shielding still get you a dose. All of this background radiation though is benign. Everyday normal exposure isn’t harmful.

        The question is how much we need to be exposed to for it to be harmful, and that’s the unanswered question about pesticides. Going back to radiation, being an X Ray technician is actually enough exposure to cause harm if you’re always in the room when it goes off. We didn’t realize this until they started showing notably higher rates of cancer. There’s also some mercury compounds that are so toxic, a researcher followed all the proper procedures and still died from exposure because it turned out the little amount that got through all the protection was still a fatal dose. We literally had no idea.

        So are pesticides causing a sperm reduction? We have absolutely no idea. That doesn’t mean we can’t cut back on it anyway though.

    • andrew@lemmy.stuart.funEnglish
      11·
      1 year ago

      Depends on whether you want kids though. Free birth control, just eat more pesticides by never washing your produce!

      • ASaltPepper@lemmy.oneEnglish
        17·
        1 year ago

        Can’t wait to see someone say.

        Oh I don’t need a condom I ate some unwashed raspberries earlier

  • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
    25·
    1 year ago

    It looks like the experiment itself was comparing sperm levels between direct exposure and indirect exposure. That tells us that high concentration and direct exposure reduce sperm and establishes the pesticide as capable of doing that. But it doesn’t tell us much about the global decline. Nothing in the article actually links the two together, and they haven’t even linked the actual study.

    We know that some harmful substances are benign in small quantities. The everyday radiation we’re exposed to by naturally occuring isotopes doesn’t do anything. On the other hand, X Rays are safe, but the technicians actually have a noticeable increase in cancer risk if they don’t leave the room when they actually take the X Ray. So the latent background radiation there is enough to make a difference.

    Ultimately, we still don’t know if the latent exposure we get to these pesticides is enough to cause reproductive harm. If there isn’t a scientifically significant difference in sperm levels between vegans and non vegetarians, I’m inclined to think this isn’t the culprit. But it’s worth further research and cutting back on usage anyway of course. It could be that we’re exposed to enough to cause a decrease in sperm, but not enough that dietary differences would be visible.

    (This is why foods and consumer products can have incredibly complex molecules and still be safe. The concentration makes it benign – most of the time. This is why food additives are an interesting topic.)

    • StupidBrotherInLaw@lemmy.world
      111·
      1 year ago

      Get outta here with your nuanced, well-reasoned opinions!

      /s

      Just kidding. Great comment and analysis, this is why I love Lemmy.

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
      21·
      1 year ago

      I was told that we haven’t even established that there is a global decline in sperm numbers. That the methods of counting in the past weren’t as good as modern ones, meaning it isn’t a controlled variable of one time.

      Also, a long the lines of what you said, I wonder if the number of people with direct exposure has gone up the past few decades or down. Less of the human race is involved with farming as farms have grown in size and output.

      • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        1 year ago

        That the methods of counting in the past weren’t as good as modern ones, meaning it isn’t a controlled variable of one time.

        That’s actually mentioned an article.

    • Fermion@feddit.nl
      271·
      1 year ago

      There’s no fda approved male birth control because everything they’ve tried to specifically target fertility has other unacceptable side effects.

      So view this as a canary in a coal mine scenario. This is one aspect of health that’s easy to measure, but without further study we cannot assume that there aren’t other more severe health complications associated with exposure to pesticides.

        • Fermion@feddit.nl
          3·
          1 year ago

          Sterilization is not equivalent to birth control. To be considered birth control, fertility should return shortly after the cessation of usage. Since vasectomies are considered permanent it’s not in the same category.

          Although, that’s beside the point, and I’m pretty sure you know it and are being cheeky. The point is if researchers trying to target just fertility with no unwanted adverse health effects have a hard time developing such a drug, then we should assume that it is very likely that substances that cause decreased fertility are also causing other adverse health consequences.

    • IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social
      111·
      1 year ago

      Depends if the economy can cope with the shrinking labor force and demand. And who is going to take care of all these old people. Unless we have automated a large part of our economy by then either we’d be fucked or the developing nations will be exploited even harder.

    • NoneOfUrBusiness@kbin.social
      41·
      1 year ago

      It’s not for countries with shrinking populations. The most sustainable model is a roughly constant population, which we’re going to reach sometime within the next 50 years. A shrinking population means an aging population, which comes with its own host of issues (see: Japan and Korea).

  • madeinthebackseat@lemmy.world
    1114·
    1 year ago

    It’s purely anecdotal, but go to a small town in Iowa and you may notice something a little unexpected - there’s seemingly a larger than normal population of gay and transgender people.

    Again, anecdotal, but I visit there frequently for work. My gut tells me the crop treatments are screwing with hormones…unless there’s some other explanation.

    • GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
      152·
      1 year ago

      Proooobbbbably that those folks finally feel remotely safe being “out”

      • wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one
        125·
        1 year ago

        People mock the gay frogs thing, but pesticide runoff was mucking with frog hormones, causing a genuine physical sex shift. Frogs are capable of shifting sex under specific conditions, and the chemical pollution was forcing the change. Huge ecological damage.

        It was perhaps the single time alex jones was correct about anything, and if he hadnt called the frogs gay he probably wouldnt have been mocked for it.

          • EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world
            31·
            1 year ago

            They do that anyway if the population ratio is off by enough, but yeah they transitioned much more rapidly and more often. They also would excrete everything at once so currently male frogs would read another current male as a mate. Technically it was a grain of truth with zero nuance

          • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
            57·
            1 year ago

            I honestly wonder if being exposed to xenoestrogens in the womb is why I’m trans.

            I’m not unhappy about it, just something I think about!

    • guckfoogle@sh.itjust.works
      51·
      1 year ago

      I grew up in Iowa, and I live in a large Ohio city now. There are barely any LGBT folks in Iowa, even per capita, it’s just not normal or accepted there en mass. There was literally only one gay kid in my high school of 1500.

      I move to Cleveland, then I meet more LGBT people than I have ever seen in my life, even having 4 lesbians in my workplace and one FTM.

      But social media is probably the biggest driving factor behind the rise of so many LGBT people in the past decade.

    • gandalf_der_12te@feddit.de
      1·
      1 year ago

      it’s also the cosmetics that contain a shitload of hormones or stuff that messes with hormones, that causes a behavioral shift in society.

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
      11·
      1 year ago

      Observation bias I imagine that and the more open society. There were always LGBT people, they just were in the closet when the theist were determined to murder them.

      • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
        1·
        1 year ago

        Just like one can’t assume no pesticides because it’s “organic,” one also can’t assume all organic growing involves pesticides. Your comment is a bit ambiguous so just want to make it clear to folks that It’s entirely case by case.

        Basically organic farms can use pesticides.

        • quindraco@lemm.ee
          15·
          1 year ago

          You want a source on the definition of organic food? That’s tough, since there’s no one standard definition - different people mean different things by the term.

          Here is a source for organic foods being defined largely by avoiding synthetic substances. That means all “natural” or non-synthetic pesticides would be allowed and hence expected. Of course, I can find you another source with a competing definition.

          Ultimately, because “organic” means whatever the speaker wants it to mean at the time, it’s impossible to really have a rational discussion about whether or not organic farms use pesticides.

    • SelfAwareCoder@kbin.social
      325·
      1 year ago

      Organic food typically has more pesticides, since gmos are often attempting to remove the need for pesticides

      • Jajcus@kbin.social
        138·
        1 year ago

        Also organic farming relies on old types of pesticides instead of the modern ones which are designed to be more effective and safe.

        • wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one
          42·
          1 year ago

          Any farmer? Including me?

          Organic is nebulous, first off. But depending on your region, the organic label just makes some specific pesticides off limits. Which means we over apply the stuff we can use.

          There isnt a modern produce company on the planet who doesnt use pesticides. You cant compete otherwise. Only pesticide free foods are locally grown by very very very small gardens and farms.

    • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
      1·
      1 year ago

      That’s one solution, but even being more careful with what pesticides are used would help in this case (though it would still be devastating for the insect population and will come back to bite us in other ways)