Obesity, pollution affect fertility

By: Rishi Mehta

Posted: 4/29/05

With so much attention on the War on Terror and the Islamic fundamentalist terrorists who threaten our way of life, seemingly benign yet harmful enemies can easily be overlooked.

Two new scientific studies show such enemies can no longer be ignored, as our very manhood is being threatened by foes within our borders.

You can forget rounding up the usual suspects, because the threat will not be among them. They are not brown with unpronounceable names. In fact, these new threats are faceless. They know no creed, they have no homeland. With such elusiveness, they have slowly infiltrated America, relentlessly pursuing their target. Indeed, obesity and environmental pollutants will stop at nothing to reach the "loins" of our society. These new foes have the potential to wreak havoc on the nature of American fertility by targeting the sperm of our male population.

Over the past two decades, obesity has slowly made its presence known within our nation. By the year 2000, 60 percent of the adult population had been attacked by this enemy, or at the very least a weaker form of such (i.e. overweight, but not obese). Until last October, when the journal of "Fertility & Sterility" published its findings on the relationship between obesity and fertility, we had no idea what motivated such an enemy to cast such an onslaught.

Close to 1,600 male volunteers participated in the Danish study, which compared the sperm of individuals with normal body mass indexes (BMI) to those with high BMIs. The researchers tested sperm count, sperm shape, sperm motility, semen volume and sperm concentration. The study made it clear what obesity's target was. The research showed that overweight men had 21.6 percent and 23.9 percent lower sperm count and sperm concentration, respectively, than men with normal BMIs. One possible tool obesity uses is the estrogen hormone. While men need a certain amount of such a hormone, too much can be problematic. Moreover, fat cells produce estrogen, hence obesity can lead to an increase of such a hormone creating the problems the Danish study revealed.

While obesity threatens the health of sperm, environmental pollutants are affecting the very nature of our sperm. A recent study in Sweden shows organochlorine pollutants have the potential to create a higher proportion of Y chromosomes in sperm. While it remains to be seen if such a change in the ratio of sex chromosomes in sperm will create a disproportionate amount of male children in future generations, the study shows the harmful affect these pollutants are having on the population. Although the study was done in Europe, these pollutants, such as PCBs, dioxin and DDT, are prevalent in America, as they were used for years in commercial and industrial applications prior to being banned. As such, it is reasonable to conclude such environmental pollutants are silently having the same adverse affects on American males as they are on Swedish males.

These two studies together make it clear that the manhood of American men is slowly being attacked. While the immediate perceived threat may be terrorism and all that it entails, we must still guard against such a relentless, slow-moving, sperm-altering enemy. While it's hard to perceive a time in which there can be a joint grass roots and government campaign against this enemy, pollution and obesity may be the very enemies needed to spark the coordination. After all, with the victims comprising approximately 50 percent of the population, the downfall of these enemies is in the best interest of almost all Americans. As our sperm continue to be attacked, our nation must come together against such common enemies.