Pesticides cause dramatic impact on male fertility, says study

Sperm count in men around the world has decreased by 50% over the last 50 years and it is likely due to pesticides, says a new study published Wednesday.

A group of American and Italian researchers conducted a meta-analysis looking at 1,774 men across 20 studies and 21 study populations. They were specifically looking for any impact on male fertility from organophosphates (OPs) and N-methyl carbamates (NMCs), two of the most common insecticides.

“They are widely used in agriculture on the crops we eat,” said Melissa Perry, one of the study’s authors. “We use them in structural applications within homes and buildings, apartment buildings, as well as for ornamental lawn upkeep. They’re available for consumer purchase so organophosphate exposures have been demonstrated to be relatively widespread.”

In addition to killing insects, OPs are also used in nerve gas and plastics and are known to cause neurodevelopmental harm to children.

Rather than analyze overall sperm count, which is the number of sperm in a total ejaculate, the study looked at the men’s sperm concentration, which is measured as the number of sperm per milliliter of semen. The researchers felt this would adjust for variabilities in semen volume.

They found a high association between the insecticides and low sperm concentration, with OPs appearing to be even more dangerous than NMCs. 

“Based on the results of this investigation, the strength of evidence of an association between higher adult OP and NMC insecticide exposure and lower sperm concentration is sufficient enough to warrant concern, particularly in light of observed downward trends in semen quality,” concluded the authors.

Men who had occupational exposure to the insecticides — those who work in agriculture, for example — predominantly had lower sperm concentrations. But “even a small magnitude of effect could have consequential impacts on sperm concentration at a population level,” explained the researchers.

Other pesticides are also known to impact male fertility. 

In one study, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley found that three-quarters of male frogs exposed to atrazine began producing less sperm and less testosterone. Not only did the frogs experience lower fertility, many sought to mate with males instead of females. Ten percent of the frogs exposed to atrazine became females producing viable eggs.

“Atrazine-exposed males were both demasculinized (chemically castrated) and completely feminized as adults,” wrote the researchers.

Tyrone Hayes, the study’s lead researcher, shared the implications of his findings.

“When we grow these guys up, depending on the family, we will get anywhere from 10 to 50 percent females,” Hayes said. “In a population, the genetically male females can decrease or wipe out a population just because they skew sex ratios so badly.”

Other studies found similar results in fish and reptiles, leading the Berkeley researchers to conclude that the effects of atrazine are the same across vertebrates.

“The similarities between these previous findings in fish and in reptiles and the present findings in an amphibian suggest that the demasculinizing effects of atrazine are also not species, genera, family, or even order specific but occur across vertebrate classes,” said the researchers.

When Hayes published his findings, he was targeted by Syngenta, the largest atrazine manufacturer in the US and closely linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Syngenta harassed Hayes and tried to defame him.

Approximately 80 million pounds of atrazine are used in the US every year. It is found on crops and has often been detected in the country’s water supply.

Pesticides are not the only prevalent toxin impacting men’s reproductive health. CNN reports several factors that may be causing this “public health issue”:

It’s not just pesticides. Researchers are exploring the role of obesity, poor diet, chronic disease and exposure to environmental toxins such as pollution, PFAS and other potential toxins. Some are even looking at radiation from mobile phone use as a potential reason for the precipitous drop in sperm count.

CNN failed to mention that researchers have also found COVID-19 mRNA injections impact male fertility. More than 70% of the world’s population — over 5.5 billion people — have been injected.

A peer-reviewed study of young Israeli men published last year showed that between two and four months after the Pfizer vaccine “Covid-19 vaccination BNT162b2 temporarily impairs semen concentration and total motile count among semen donors.” The effect was described as “temporary” because it appeared to return to near-normal levels after approximately five months.

However, claims that the study showed “recovery” at around five months post-vaccination were possibly accurate for some trial participants but certainly grossly inaccurate for at least a quarter of them — their parameters continued to decline, often significantly.

Virtually all studies claiming to show that mRNA injection does not impair fertility stop two months after the second dose. It is unclear if this is by design so as not to reveal another adverse event, but top scientists who have asked such questions have been suppressed.