The human race may be at risk because the number of sperm continues to decline, an epidemiologist said according to Axios.
Mt. Sinai Medical School epidemiologist Shanna Swan co-authored a 2017 analysis that found that the total number of sperms in the Western world decreased by 59% between 1973 and 2011.
Swan has now written a new book called “Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, And Imperiling the Future of the Human Race”, which uses earlier conclusions from her study for sperm counts .
“If you look at the curve of the sperm count and project it forward – which is always risky – it reaches zero in 2045,” Swan said, adding that according to Axios, the average man would have no viable sperm. “It’s a little worrying, to say the least.”
The serious consequences could make the world struggle to reproduce.
Between 1964 and 2018, the global fertility rate dropped from 5.06 to 2.04. To make matters worse, many countries around the world, including the US, have fertility rates below replacement levels, according to a study by Yale Global. According to the study, about half of the world’s population is responsible for the affected countries.
“In some parts of the world, the average twenty-something woman today is less fertile than her grandmother was at 35,” Swan wrote according to the New York Post (NYP).
There are still other factors that contribute to declining fertility rates, except for the number of sperm, such as contraception, personal choice and the rising cost of raising a child. However, these other factors do not close the gap for people who say they want children, but then not, according to Swan.
A three-day-old baby from the neonatology station of the Buergerhospital clinic is waiting to move to another hospital in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany, on September 2, 2017, as evacuation measures are underway due to the discovery of a British WO II bomb.
(FRANK RUMPENHORST / DPA / AFP via Getty Images)
Swan said increasing miscarriages and other signs indicate biological factors are at play, according to Axios.
According to a report by the Urology Times Journal, testosterone levels have also dropped in young adults and teens. To combat the declining levels, prescriptions for testosterone therapies more than doubled between 2010 and 2013, according to Forbes.
Swan says ’90 percent of men can drop their sperm counts to zero while they’re on [testosterone replacement therapies], ”According to the NYP.
“When women want a baby, they are often told, ‘Clean up,'” Swan writes, according to the NYP. “But it’s probably more important for men to do it.” (RELATED: The United States Has Had Fewer Babies This Year Than the Past 30 Years: Report)
She notes that according to Axios, there is an increase in boys with gender disorders and earlier signs of puberty among girls. According to Swan, these findings have shown that there are endocrine disrupting chemicals in everyday items that can affect fertility.
“Chemicals in our environment and unhealthy lifestyle practices in our modern world are disturbing our hormonal balance, causing varying degrees of reproductive devastation,” Swan wrote according to Axios.
These chemicals include phthalates and bisphenol-A, which according to Axios are found in common items such as plastics, pesticides, cosmetics and even some receipts. Phthalates, which can make plastics flexible and absorb beauty fragrances, have been linked to a decrease in the production of hormones such as testosterone, according to a 2015 study by the National Library of Medicine.
According to Axios, other factors such as smoking tobacco and marijuana and obesity can also affect the fertility rate among men and women. Some scientists have criticized studies linking endocrine disrupting chemicals to fertility problems, according to the Science Media Center. But as Swan notes, there are other factors at hand.
“The current state of reproductive affairs cannot continue much longer without threatening human survival,” Swan writes according to Axios.
The Daily Caller issued Swan but did not receive a response during publication.