(02-20-2021 10:48 AM)bullet Wrote: https://nypost.com/2021/02/20/why-more-m...ign=829036
Maybe the Republicans should push more environmentalism. Seems these contaminants in the environment are what is creating all these soy boy Democrats!
"Sperm counts in Western countries have dropped by more than 50 percent since the 1970s. At the same time, men’s problems with conceiving are going up: Erectile dysfunction is increasing and testosterone levels are declining by 1 percent each year.
“The current state of reproductive affairs can’t continue much longer without threatening human survival,” warns Mount Sinai fertility scientist Dr. Shanna Swan in her book, “Count Down” (Scribner), out Tuesday. “It’s a global existential crisis....”
Worldwide fertility has dropped by 50 percent between 1960 and 2015. The United States has a total birth rate that is 16 percent below what it needs to replace itself. Though there are obvious factors at play (couples are conceiving later and opting to have smaller families), Swan argues that the issues run deeper than personal choice.
Rates of miscarriages are on the rise and girls are experiencing earlier and earlier puberties (in some cases before the age of 8). “In some parts of the world, the average twenty-something woman today is less fertile than her grandmother was at 35,” Swan writes....
Normal sperm count ranges from 15 million sperm per milliliter to 200 million per milliliter. Though the World Health Organization deems a rate below 15 million as “low,” Swan argues that anything below 40 million creates challenges for reproduction. Today the average male is nearing that number at 47.1 million sperm per milliliter. Compare him to his father, who had an average of 99 million sperm per milliliter, and it’s clear that this is a deeply worrying trend.
Not only do men today have less sperm than their fathers, but they also have lower testosterone levels. A 2006 study showed that a 65-year-old man in 2002 would have testosterone levels that are 15 percent lower than a 65-year-old man in 1987. A similar drop has been noted in young adults and adolescents, according to a 2020 Urology Times Journal article...."
IN the world's oceans there are 3 large piles of plastic floating where currents converge. The size of these piles are massive, the size of large states. As the plastic sublimates the pcp's and other chemicals mentioned in the article sink. They hare having the same reproductive impact on the bottom of the oceans food chain and he negative impact of them are found in breeding stocks of ocean fish and in some ocean mammals nearer the top of the food chain.
Our garbage, much of which comes from China and other Asians countries, and which is routinely dumped from ocean going vessels, is not only impacting us as we eat and drink from such containers but impacting the source that provides nearly 70% of the worlds protein sources. Our lakes and rivers are contaminated with the garbage dumped by lazy boaters and runoff from pesticides and herbicides, and again sublimating plastics from landfills which get in groundwater.
Your local water treatment plant can't filter out all of the contaminants so even tap water contains them, as well as rising levels of some poisons such as antibiotics which collect in wastewater and cannot be filtered.
The result encompasses the following: Loss of testosterone, resistance to antibiotics, the destruction by herbicides of aquatic plant life that hides the eggs and fry that spawn. Without that aquatic plant life reproduction of fresh water species of fish plummet. Lake Martin here in Alabama has seen such a decline.
So the problem is extensive, but a large part of it could easily be eliminated by simply going back to bottles and cans both of which are easily recyclable. What's more is much of the plastic we recycle isn't recycled. It is shipped to Asia to get it out of our landfills, only it winds back up in the oceans.
Now people can talk green house gasses all they want and I'll laugh at much of it. But this is in my opinion not only a legitimate threat, but a damned serious one. We keep the plastics industry up because so many are invested in it. We refuse to address the issue because it would cause a collapse in those stocks. Glass isn't cheaper, but it is safer and healthier in all regards. But try selling that extra cost to Pepsi and Coke!
By the way cancers are also resulting from these chemicals. If we want to live and reproduce we'll get rid of all plastic food containers and limit its use and manage its recycling responsibly.
