Lemming's Insane Ranting

I hope our new water ultrafiltration thing works for us....

Fertility and sterility: Male infertility rates are soaring worldwide, with environmental toxins and drugs in the drinking water the likely causes, scientists reported at this week's 18th World Congress on Fertility and Sterility in Montreal.

"Over the past 50 years, sperm counts have been declining in humans, in animals, even fish," Serge Belisle, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Montreal, told Montreal newspaper The Gazette.

Although still controversial, the best analyses do show a significant decline in male fertility, said Gail Prins, a male-infertility expert at the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center.

While the cause isn't certain, there is strong evidence that a group of chemicals called endocrine disruptors, which are used in most pesticides, can have a big impact on the reproductive systems of animals, Prins said in an interview.

"I never microwave anything in plastic because of the chemicals that leach out when plastic is heated," she said. Similarly, Prins drinks purified water and tries to minimize her exposure to pesticides in food or in the environment. "There's strong evidence that pesticides can impact on reproductive systems."

Meanwhile, German scientists report that women who live in areas with high levels of pollution are more likely to have twins. Twin birth rates in an area near a toxic-waste incinerator were double those in other regions of Germany.

That's an unusual finding, Prins said. "But it raises a flag that there might be something there."