Sofia Quaglia
Wed 15 Dec 2021 05.00 EST
Decreasing fertility rates may be linked to pollution caused by fossil fuel burning, a review of scientific studies has found.
Over the past 50 years childbirth has steadily decreased. The study focused on Denmark, but the trend is also seen in other industrialised nations. One in 10 Danish children are born with assisted reproduction and more than 20% of men never have children, according to the researchers. This decrease seems to have started at the beginning of industrialisation.
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Falling birthrates are often chalked up to cultural and socioeconomic factors, such as the rise of access to planned parenthood, contraception and abortion, and the changing role of women in society, as education and participation in the workforce has delayed childbearing, for example. But data shows that pregnancies were already declining before the rollout of the contraceptive pill, overall abortion numbers are decreasing over the years, and unintended pregnancy loss has been increasing by 1-2% since 1990.
Instead, a growing body of research has shown growing rates of human infertility due to biological reasons including 74,000 yearly cases of testicular cancer, insufficient sperm and egg quality, premature puberty in young women, and an increase in the number of congenital malformations in male infant genitalia .
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Fossil fuels are ubiquitous and they have been found in people’s blood, urine, semen, placenta and breast milk, as well as their fatty tissue. Many fossil fuel pollutants are endocrine disruptors, meaning they interfere with the body’s hormonal systems and have a negative effect on reproductive health.
“We know from numerous experimental animal studies that plastics, chemicals, and so forth can cause problems in animal reproduction,” said Skakkebæk. “We cannot do such exposure studies in humans, that would not be ethical, but we know enough from animal studies to be concerned.”
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