SPERM COUNT DROP MORE WORRY THAN AGW
Forget about trying to prove Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). By far the most pressing problem is the threat of human extinction as sperm counts continue to fall. Sperm counts have plunged by nearly 60 per cent in just 40 years among men living in the West, according to a major review of scientific studies which suggests that the modern world is causing serious damage to men’s health.
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Pesticides, hormone-disrupting chemicals, diet, stress, smoking and obesity have all been “plausibly associated” with the problem, which is associated with a range of other illnesses such as testicular cancer and a generally
increased mortality rate. The researchers who carried out the review said the rate of decline had showed no sign of “leveling off” in recent years.
Life Begins
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Last July the Australian Guardian wrote: “The infertility crisis is beyond doubt. Now scientists must find the cause. News last week that sperm counts in western men have halved confirmed what experts already knew. The real problem is that no one knows why”.
“Yet the scenarios outlined in these books and dramatisations may be less fanciful than is first supposed. Indeed, reaction to a study of male infertility, published suggests we may already be hurtling towards such a fate”.
Could Junk Food Be Playing a Role?
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According to scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, sperm counts among men in the west have more than halved in the past 40 years and are currently falling by an average of 1.4% a year. Humanity could soon become extinct, it was claimed by some commentators. It was a chilling and alarming revelation. Western nations – although not developing countries – appear to be facing disaster. But what could be triggering this decline in sperm? And what can be done to combat this?
“We have no idea about what is the cause of the condition. We cannot remedy it. So we are completely hamstrung” ……Richard Sharpe, professor
Answering these questions turns out to be a lot more awkward than was previously realised, and while the most strident apocalyptic warnings that have followed publication of the Jerusalem study are dismissed by experts, most believe its findings suggest we face a major social and biological problem. Worryingly, there is little evidence that any action is being taken to address the coming crisis.
Claudia Hammond BBC news: But is it really true that sperm counts are in free-fall globally? To understand why this perception is so common, we have to go back to a paper published 20 years ago. Elisabeth Carlsen and her colleagues reviewed 61 studies of semen quality carried out between 1938 and 1990, and their conclusions published in the British Medical Journal in 1992 were shocking. In 50 years sperm counts had halved. The authors were open in saying that the data did not indicate whether or not the decline was continuing. But the mass of publicity their findings received left many with the idea that it had been proven beyond doubt – sperm counts are not only falling everywhere, but will continue to do so.
Most plastic products, from sippy cups to food wraps, can release chemicals that act like the sex hormone estrogen, according to a study in Environmental Health Perspectives.
The study found these chemicals even in products that didn’t contain BPA, a compound in certain plastics that’s been widely criticized because it mimics estrogen.
Many plastic products are now marketed as BPA-free, and manufacturers have begun substituting other chemicals whose effects aren’t as well known.
But it’s still unclear whether people are being harmed by BPA or any other so-called estrogenic chemicals in plastics. Most studies of health effects have been done in mice and rats.
Plastic To Petrol?
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Plastic to Oil Machine
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The new study doesn’t look at health risks. It simply asks whether common plastic products release estrogen-like chemicals other than BPA. The researchers bought more than 450 plastic items from stores including Walmart and Whole Foods. They chose products designed to come in contact with food — things like baby bottles, deli packaging and flexible bags, says George Bittner, one of the study’s authors and a professor of biology at the University of Texas, Austin. Then CertiChem, a testing company founded by Bittner, chopped up pieces of each product and soaked them in either saltwater or alcohol to see what came out.
The testing showed that more than 70 percent of the products released chemicals that acted like estrogen. And that was before they exposed the stuff to real-world conditions: simulated sunlight, dishwashing and microwaving, Bittner says.
Sea of Plastic Forever
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One major sticking point for scientists is the challenge of drawing conclusions from hundreds of studies, each using different animals (mice and rats among them), doses, and routes of exposure. As the Environmental Protection Agency has noted, “there is controversy about whether effects seen at lower doses in animals are meaningful and relevant to humans.” And scientists have also wondered whether rodents are more sensitive to the chemical than us because they metabolize it differently.
11 Comments
I would like to see the well paid scientists and members of the IPCC, who seek to control the distribution of world energy, conduct their meetings in Indonesia among the mountains of plastic trash bound for our oceans and waterways and/or visit Africa and India where populations are out of control.
I doubt that they would want to know about it. Being there and seeing the conditions these people are living under might make them re-examine their priorities.
It might be too late because these contaminants are in the world’s food chain. I read where a British study revealed that we are ingesting up to 11,000 tiny pieces of plastic every year with dozens of particles becoming embedded in tissues, scientists have warned, this was described as ‘sobering’ by the Prince of Wales.
Researchers from the University of Ghent in Belgium believe that microplastics accumulate in the body over time and could be a long term health risk.
And they say the amount of plastic absorbed will only get worse as pollution in the oceans increases, a finding described by the Prince of Wales as ‘sobering.’ The Prince has previously described micro-particles as ‘grey goo.
I could not find anything about plastic particles on the World Health Organisation (WHO) which is surprising. However the the World Watch Institute did with a great amount of detail. excerpt below:
They condemn the preferential treatment offered to the plastic industry. While food or pharmaceutical industries have to prove that their products are safe, plastic producers ask governments to prove that plastic is not safe. The authors recognize the lack of research to make definitive statements on the risks of plastic toxicity, but there is enough to invoke the precautionary principle. Regulations need to be changed to head towards a closed-loop system where plastics are re-used and recycled, starting with the most dangerous one. To those arguing the plastic industry is an important sector during an economic crisis, the authors remind readers of the costs of dealing with plastic debris. For instance, the Division of Maintenance in the California Department of Transportation reports spending approximately $41 million a year just on litter removal. Some plastic manufacturers are already working on closed-loop systems and safer materials to boost innovation. Scientists call the biggest producers to “act now,” as plastic pollution is getting worse every day and the window to deal with it effectively is closing.
Mr. Macguire in The Graduate was right, “there is a great future in plastics.” Not in unregulated production of 280 million tons a year, but in changing policies to ban the worst of them; finding ways to limit consumption of them; redesigning plastics to be environmentally benign; and in developing a closed-loop production, consumption and recycling system to avoid a catastrophic accumulation of plastic in our environment.
Fossil fuels have been involved in the manufacture of everything we we have today. They have helped us achieve the standard of living that we now enjoy, without them we would have nothing but now it has reached the stage where we will have to pay.
There is a down side due to the by products of crude oil and the hundreds of chemicals contained in its refinement. Then there is the unbridled removal of most of the world’s trees and of course the leaching of chemicals from plastic which breaks down into minute particles poisoning the fish that we harvest from our oceans.
Meanwhile the alarmists are trying to implicate carbon dioxide, a natural trace gas vital to the survival of trees, who give off the oxygen we need to breathe, is taking the rap as the number one polluter, where it is argued, though there is no evidence, that a portion of the world’s natural warming cycle could be attributed to it. Judith Dixon
Which is the most dangerous to human health, plastic pollution or carbon dioxide? Plastics of course. So why are we spending all this money on handouts to any expert who can produce a paper that could implicate man in climate change?
I would rather we adapt as past generations have and start removing plastic from our oceans. There have been some halfhearted attempts by the UN to extract promises from the main polluters who have refused.
The real doomsday scenario for the world is the continued ingestion of micro plastics not the earth’s natural cycle of warming and cooling on which they are doing nothing because its to hard.
The assumption that most of the Global Warming is caused by man’s emissions of carbon dioxide makes no sense. If it was true how can they explain the 40 year period of cooling after 1941 through 1979 and the recent flat period of 18 years from 1995 through to 2013.
The land areas of the earth heat up quicker than the sea and therefore there is a lull in land warming until the sea heats up.. This why there are periods of flat land temperature readings while this is going on.
That is absolute rubbish! You have been watching to much ABC Q & A.
Just shut up and believe! said Tucker Carlson on Fox News after he couldn’t get a straight answer from Bill Nye (The science guy) in regard to the extent of man’s involvement in the earth’s natural climate cycle. Meanwhile the world is literally choking on plastics and they (the scientists to obtain funding and in the interests of alarmists ) are completely ignoring it.
The plastic problem is real and reaching disastrous proportions. Our oceans are choking with it and could well be to late to fix unless we do something now. But our scientists would prefer to write up pie in the sky doomsday scenarios about both global warming and global cooling for the future when they won’t be around to be held accountable.
White House Science and chief Climate adviser, John Holdren, recently predicted, “A growing body of evidence suggests that the kind of extreme cold being experienced by much of the United States as we speak is a pattern we can expect to see with increasing frequency, as global warming continues.” This the exact opposite of what the UN “settled science” IPCC predicted in its global-warming report, which claimed that the planet would see “warmer winters and fewer cold spells, because of climate change.” Yet Holdren had warned decades ago that human CO2 emissions would lead to a billion deaths due to global warming causing global cooling — which he said would lead to a new ice age by 2020.
It is probably the food we eat or our exposure to chemicals either way it is going to be very difficult to discover what is causing this sperm count decline.
The first action would be to clean up our oceans and rivers. A big ask when you have countries like Indonesia where the disposal of plastic is in the nearest waterway.
I would also conduct a study on caffeine (coffee drinkers), a widely used drug in the western world where most of the sperm counts have been measured, it is a stimulate and also a NATURAL PESTICIDE which paralyses insects that attack the Coffea tree from where the coffee beans are harvested.