Chemicals in Plastics are Laying Waste to Male Fertility

in #health5 years ago (edited)

Plastics may have changed the way we live in many positive ways, but it's far from being "all good". It's everywhere, affecting our environment, other animals and ourselves in ways we're only just learning about. Many of us are now aware of the huge floating plastic garbage islands in the oceans. There are even micro plastics that get ingested by nonhuman and human animals alike.


Source

Even without consuming plastics, there are other threats that plastic pose due to the chemicals put into them. These include chemicals like BPA, which is found in so much, from DVDs to cash register receipts. BPA has is known to be an endocrine disruptor. What does that matter, you might ask?

Chemicals like BPA can affect the brain and nervous system's development growth and metabolism, as well as the reproductive system. This chemical has be shown to lower sperm quality, which lowers fertility. And most of us carry it in our bodies because it's so pervasive in our modern world. It's now in our landfills, waterways and oceans.

There are other plastic chemicals that are creating a sperm crisis. These include DEHP and polychlorinated biphenyl 153 (PCB153). Humanity is being changed because we are too foolish to see the consequences to our actions at the time, and just do and use anything so long as it has a benefit or makes money. This has resulted in a progressive lowering of sperm quality for the past 80 years, which has declined by 50% in that time.

A study in 2016 showed how our modern living has affected other animals, such as dogs. Domestic dogs has a decline in sperm quality as well. A new study published today, confirms this modern problem, titled "Independent and combined effects of diethylhexyl phthalate and polychlorinated biphenyl 153 on sperm quality in the human and dog".

Scientists looked at the two chemicals previously mentioned, DEHP and PCB153. DEHP is used to increase the plsaticity of a mertial (make it more like plastic, bending). PCB153 is now banned, but it was so widely used that it's still all around us, including in human and dog food.

To see what effects these chemicals could have on sperm, "researchers incubated sperm from human and dog donors with concentrations of the chemicals comparable to those found in the natural environment". The effect of these chemicals was twofold: 1) decreasing motility (movement), and 2) increasing damage to the DNA.

OK, so we didn't know about all the bad shit from using these chemicals in our "plastic revolution". I guess we had to learn the hard way with negative consequences. But now we do know. So, why are many of these chemicals still being used? Profit and convenience.

Companies want to keep using them, because hey, they make profit by producing plastics that have certain properties. And customers, well, we're going to keep buying them because we want those products. Yet, we, the consumers, hold the power to change what we're doing to ourselves. The companies don't care, they just watn the money. Why anre't we caring more?

Maybe it will take more negative consequences because we stop paying for these products that only harm ourselves in the long-term, although imperceptibly at first. At some point, we're going to see the problems more clearly, as it becomes harder and harder to keep the human species going, not to mention the effect on other animals. Will it be too late at that point? maybe eugenics science will save us with gene-edited babies... Welcome to the Brave New World of test tube babies.


Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.


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Thank you again for an informative story about how some plastics are detrimental to the human race. As consumers, those of us who choose to use what seems to be chemically inert glass are penalised by being required to pay a deposit so we return said container to the store. Yet, there is no such incentive mechanism for plastic.

Some might baulk at the idea of paying this deposit for glass containers. It but the fact that we still have them in stores means that shop keepers know there is a sector of consumers that prefer to get stuff with out plastic even though they need to pay deposits and bring them back empties when done!

Yup, some people like glass more, like me and probably you, and some don't care but they buy their alcohol in it and pay the deposit to get high ;) A fee for plastic production and use is one way, but I don't much support the idea, although it seems like nothing else will get people to do anything about it through their own cognizance to remedy the situation...

Sometimes makes me consider the question of "optimal human population size" vs just "How MANY humans can the planet support?" Is it all just self-regulating, in ways we have not even considered? We invent things that "inadvertently" kill us or reduce the population size... because some mechanism senses there are "too many of us."

How do we get rid of plastic, or reduce it? Buy food and other things that come in glass containers, rather than plastic. Tastes better, anyway, and is almost infinitely recyclable and reusable. "But it's HEAVY!" Oh, boo-hoo-hoo... "But it BREAKS!" Sure, and maybe there's a lesson to treat things with more respect, and not just as an eternal chain of "throwaways..."

The first question you pose, regarding carrying capacity, can only be answered in terms of quality of life. In turn the question begs another: how can humanity be supported on Earth?

This is, in fact, the key question, as how support is created determines how much of it there is. For example, to provide grain from a field crop, one can provide a little more if one includes all the seed for next year to consumers instead. Thereafter there's no more grain available.

If support is only provided by commercial farms owned by megacorporations, who spend no little attention on lobbying, lawfare, and marketing, which help it to crush competition and gain a monopoly, so much may be supported. If different mechanisms are used, or banned, or prevented from being options by resource depletion, different answers to the question are arrived at.

There really is no actual limit to how many people can live well on Earth. Given aquaponics and personal control of food production via in home vertical farming, neither is there any limit on the quality of that sustenance. The limits presently are effects of the socioeconomic systems presently employed, and those are selected not for the benefit of consumers, but for investors.

Yeah, glass containers are more handy to resuse, but not everything comes in that format. me and my partner try to live by zero-waste, but some foods are even wrapped in plastic and we can't avoid it if we want to get a good deal on the food ;)

Glass may break, but it doesn't slowly destroy your health ;) I have so many glass jars at my place lol...

We just recently made the move away from using plastic as our containers. We had about 75% plastic and 25% glass/steel. We now have 90% glass and 10% plastic. The food lasts so much longer in glass Pyrex than it ever did in plastic! It also tastes better. More people are realizing this thankfully, I’ve talked to numerous people and they’re switching to glass and steel for their needs. It could be because I live in Boston and it’s a fairly progressive attitude towards these things, but I’ve seen it more and more.
One of our friends had trouble getting pregnant and there were so many environmental factors involved they didn’t consider. He drinks about 10 sodas a day (or pop depending on what you call it lol), eats all kinds of junk, processed meats. He was consuming so much stuff that was processed with DEHP and BPA I wouldn’t be surprised if that had a major influence on it as well.

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Great job! I still have some plastic, I need to go buy more glass and make the full change ;)

Hehe, a modern society of people who eat plastic without realizing they are eating plastic ;) We poison ourselves and are so ignorant that it's going on...s ad world.

I am appalled at the blithe tolerance of the health impact of endocrine disrupting chemicals. Not only additives in plastics used in packaging, but pollution from pharmaceuticals, particularly The Pill, and direct additives to food, seem to have not been objected to at all.

Do we assume that after 80 years of exposure, resulting in a decrease in fertility of over 50%, there were no studies before these effects were caused? Do we assume the present social attack on men is unrelated? How about the lawfare and horrible imbalance in victims of legal actions between men and women? Why is no effective action being taken immediately to prevent this medical harm?

Only Pollyanna could fail to grasp that it is not accident that all these attacks on men are concatenating in the West, and have been planned for decades to be doing so now.

We are being replaced with a more docile population.

The red blooded American man has become a relic of history, a meme that soyboys scoff at.

What feminists fail to note is that H. sapiens is one species. Women and lesser men are not benefited by an attack on strong men.

Thanks!

Yeah, the waste of drugs in the water supply is alarming. They took samples from the great lakes years ago and so many pharmas were in there...

While I agree with much of what you say, the "soyboy" epithet is a fallacy. Neither soy nor dead animal body parts make a man.

The family unit is under attack, and changing men and women are key to making a populace more dependent on the state and society.

I was told by my obstetrician that giving my son infant formula based on soy would be the equivalent of giving him 6 birth control pills a day due to the very high concentrations of phytoestrogens it contained. We may not be what we eat, but it seems to have an impact, at least.

I didn't coin the term soyboy, and given the common observation of the synchronicity between male feminists and soy products, it is a convenient appellation to differentiate between populations of men based on their apparent testosterone levels. Again, common assumptions are that there are synchronicities between testosterone levels and political affiliation. This may or may not be scientifically accurate, but it is at least ontologically consistent.

That being said, it wasn't my intention to cast aspersions, despite that I may do so simply out of attempts to limit my verbosity - which is sadly in evidence here!

Phytoestrogens (and soy is one of the primary sources in Western diets) are frequently cited as contributing to the emasculation of Western men, along with plastics, legacy birth control and other chemicals and drugs polluting our environment.

It is why I avoid soy.

Sadly, we have very little definitive research on which to base our understanding of the issue. Worse, the politicizing of science forces us to consider research - particularly on this inflammatory issue - with jaundiced eyes. It is amost as important to know where the funding for research came from nowadays as it is to know what the papers report.

"The family unit is under attack, and changing men and women are key to making a populace more dependent on the state and society."

On this we agree completely. I note we also seem to be in complete agreement that present changes are going in the wrong direction, and producing results opposed to what we believe are desirable.

Thanks!

I was told by my obstetrician that giving my son infant formula based on soy would be the equivalent of giving him 6 birth control pills a day due to the very high concentrations of phytoestrogens it contained. We may not be what we eat, but it seems to have an impact, at least.

I didn't coin the term soyboy, and given the common observation of the synchronicity between male feminists and soy products, it is a convenient appellation to differentiate between populations of men based on their apparent testosterone levels. Again, common assumptions are that there are synchronicities between testosterone levels and political affiliation. This may or may not be scientifically accurate, but it is at least ontologically consistent.

That being said, it wasn't my intention to cast aspersions, despite that I may do so simply out of attempts to limit my verbosity - which is sadly in evidence here!

Phytoestrogens (and soy is one of the primary sources in Western diets) are frequently cited as contributing to the emasculation of Western men, along with plastics, legacy birth control and other chemicals and drugs polluting our environment.

It is why I avoid soy.

Sadly, we have very little definitive research on which to base our understanding of the issue. Worse, the politicizing of science forces us to consider research - particularly on this inflammatory issue - with jaundiced eyes. It is amost as important to know where the funding for research came from nowadays as it is to know what the papers report.

"The family unit is under attack, and changing men and women are key to making a populace more dependent on the state and society."

On this we agree completely. I note we also seem to be in complete agreement that present changes are going in the wrong direction, and producing results opposed to what we believe are desirable.

Thanks!

OK, so we didn't know about all the bas shit from using these chemicals in our plastic revolution. I guess we had to learn the hard way with negative consequences. But now we do know. So, why are many of these chemicals still being used? Profit and convenience.

Given all the the different ways they assault us, agendas regarding depopulation etc I am not so sure it was not known by those controlling the introduction and usage of these products. It suggests as much as well in the question you asked about why are they still being used. I read recently the plastics have ruined our water supply and they have no effective means to clean it from the water they pipe into our houses.

You might check the water pipes in your home. Nowadays, most of them are plastic.

It's pretty hard to refute the assumption that, particularly endocrine disrupting chemical pollution, is to some degree, done on purpose. There are options to plastic water supply pipes and plastic drinking water jugs, yet not only aren't companies required to use them, there is no apparent effort to make them do so.

Thanks!

I have seen plastics that are BPA free for water storage and food. Perhaps in some way this plays a part in the populations control efforts that have been ongoing by the elites. Men's briefs are also supposed to have an impact on sperm. Thanks @krnel

The BPA products highlight that they are free of bisphenol A. But what do they use instead? Combinations of BP B, C and others. Just an unfortunate bait and switch.

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You can see that from the bright side.
It helps with overpopulation. In humans and dogs.
But joke aside, at the end of the day, we (the customers) decide what we buy.

Yup, we're to blame (collectively) for the world we have...

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