So this trend has been going on for a while now, I looked a bit into it about 5 years ago here's what I found:
- Tons of popular and legal products/chemicals are "endocrine disruptors"[1] (fancy term for mess with hormones).
- The FDA/EPA doesn't deny that, they don't themselves even really require tests for long-term health effects in humans (too difficult). Instead they give animals a 1000x+ dose and look for immediate drastic effects (this is abbreviated "LOAEL"). That's the reason we have a xenoestrogen in the lining of soda cans (BPA), because we're trusting that tiny doses must be negligible, which isn't necessarily a valid assumption [2].
- The attitude on a lot of chemicals is "Safe until proven guilty," but when some of these chemicals are suspect (e.g. pesticides) instead of a public announcement they are pulled from public use quietly prior to the point of definitive evidence. New/similar ones can be introduced with presumption of safe until proven guilty. (Search PFOAs if you want to get a sense of how ineffective our protection mechanisms are)
I came to the conclusion a radically new model is necessary, the EPA/FDA need to design models to test for fertility effects, perhaps multigenerationally, in their studies (fruit flies?) quickly.
My bet is within 20 years we'll see it as the more immediate problem than global warming.
I've heard on a few podcasts that this is how European countries do this. We need to stop letting for-profit companies gamble with the health and longevity of the species in the interest of profits.
> My bet is within 20 years we'll see it as the more immediate problem than global warming.
I don't want to diminish the importance of a paradigm shift in how regulators treat various chemicals, but I don't think this will be anywhere near as severe and immediate threat as climate change.
Ultimately, if there is a substantial pool of people who's fertility is not adversely impacted by some yet to be identified chemical, then it will be those people who's genes will pass on. Within a generation we as a species will have developed resistance to at least the impact on fertility by some unregulated chemical.
Which could be an issue by itself, as whatever mutation confers resistance to it could have side effects, unless it's some enhanced degradation of toxins or something.
But what if it's some other random thing that also gives people heart attacks?
On the other hand, people in more industrial countries are exposed to different chemicals (BPA, FPOAs, flame retardants, food additives, etc.), than people in more agrarian countries (field chemicals, like fertilizers and pesticides). These chemicals are all harmful, but it's hard to blame a single class of them for a global problem.
If I had to pick a truly universal issue, I would say childhood and young adult obesity. Surprisingly, obesity is growing rapidly even in countries where hunger is also a problem.
As someone who is too lazy to do their own research on this topic....did you happen to find which products generally contain the most endocrine disruptors?
My partner and I recently embarked on a journey to replace as many products in our lives that contain endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDC's) as we could. It's _really_ hard.
You have to carefully read product labels, 99.9% of products don't contain any info about EDC's, you have to specially seek out ones that are labeled as phthalate-free, BPA-free, etc.
Biggest offenders are in the kitchen and bathroom. Shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, perfume, are big offenders. There are special versions of these products you can find but they don't usually work as well. Most things that are scented have phthalates. Pretty much any food that comes in a flexible plastic container, most dairy and eggs have it as well (dairy because of the flexible plastic tubing used when pumping milk).
They'll be in basically all of the plastic around you - since the chemicals do a good job at plasticizing (making plastic less brittle).
If you want a more thorough list, the NIH compiled this
---
What are some common endocrine disruptors?
Bisphenol A (BPA) — used to make polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins, which are found in many plastic products including food storage containers
Dioxins — produced as a byproduct in herbicide production and paper bleaching, they are also released into the environment during waste burning and wildfires
Perchlorate — a by-product of aerospace, weapon, and pharmaceutical industries found in drinking water and fireworks
Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) — used widely in industrial applications, such as firefighting foams and non-stick pan, paper, and textile coatings
Phthalates — used to make plastics more flexible, they are also found in some food packaging, cosmetics, children’s toys, and medical devices
Phytoestrogens — naturally occurring substances in plants that have hormone-like activity, such as genistein and daidzein that are in soy products, like tofu or soy milk
Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE) — used to make flame retardants for household products such as furniture foam and carpets
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) — used to make electrical equipment like transformers, and in hydraulic fluids, heat transfer fluids, lubricants, and plasticizers
Triclosan — may be found in some anti-microbial and personal care products, like liquid body wash
If I recall correctly, the best way to avoid immediate exposure to this class of chemical was to avoid heat your food inside plastic containers (typically in a microwave) as this can mobilise some of the more volatile endocrine-disrupting compounds into your meal.
Through history, only a mass of people have forced a change. That's not possible until you start changing first. And when people around you notice, educate them. It will take time, eventually it will happen.
One thing that I'm genuinely curious about that I've never heard addressed is whether the large increase of people identifying as trans(trans women in particular) could be related to the same factors that are causing lowered sperm counts and testosterone in men. There are massive amounts of compounds in our environment that are endocrine disrupters or mimic sex hormones like estrogen. Like maybe many persons assumed to be trans could be people affected by the same environmental contaminants or other factors that are behind those and that's why they end up feeling different than typical for their sex? Maybe they would even benefit more from hormone treatments in the opposite direction than the "gender affirming" treatments. How do we know we need to affirm their gender feelings instead of treat their medical problems? I haven't heard anyone in any public forum try to explain in good faith why or why not explanations other than what they feel being completely natural might be the case.
> the large increase of people identifying as trans(trans women in particular)
Well, that's not quite accurate. (a) there isn't a large increase of trans people, historically speaking, just folks being more open and honest about their status recently, since it's become marginally less punished in a few specific places, than it has been prior, and (b) in recent years, trans men or transmasc folks are the largest group of those new influx, not trans women.
> There are massive amounts of compounds in our environment that are endocrine disrupters or mimic sex hormones like estrogen
If people were getting estrogen in the environment that they didn't want in any amount meaningful enough to effect them, you'd wouldn't expect to see more trans women (trans women, generally speaking, are usually deficient in estrogen), you'd expect to see more dysphoric men. You'd expect to see a sharp increase in cis men presenting with ED and gynecomastia and such. (Which, to be fair, is a thing we're seeing. But so far, appears to be mainly linked to increasing obesity rates)
> Maybe they would even benefit more from hormone treatments in the opposite direction than the "gender affirming" treatments.
This is barbaric if you think about it for more than 5 seconds. So barbaric in fact, that it's been outlawed in many nations -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_therapy for more info
Additionally, as trans people are more accepted the rate of the increasing population of trans people is slowing. This suggests that it’s stabilizing and that the population would normally always have a % of trans people if it weren’t for oppression (like left handed ness rapidly increased in the generation we stopped punishing people with left handedness and then it leveled off)
Currently it is impossible to know whether the increasing numbers of people identifying as trans is due to less fear of punishment as you say, or due to hormonal disruption. The only way I've thought of is long term studies of endocrine disruption quantification in pregnant mothers and their children, correlated with transexualism.
> This is barbaric if you think about it for more than 5 seconds.
It is barbaric to not even consider a different point of view because it opposes your religion (yes, I think it is a religion at this point)
Sorry if I appear harsh, but I believe that in a couple of decades we will look back at what the pharma industry is doing to "trans" people as we look back on lobotomy now.
> You'd expect to see a sharp increase in cis men presenting with ED and gynecomastia and such.
It does feel like I've seen more men with more than just regular moobs, who aren't necessarily otherwise severely obese. The trans women I know have less shapely breasts even though they're deliberately taking hormones, and it's a bit bizarre. Not a huge amount, but enough to notice. I'd be willing to believe also that there's a contingent of those that are trans men too, but I just mean it's actually more bizarre to see someone who is otherwise just a cis man with like C or D cups
It might be the case that endocrine disruptors may be increasing the likelihood a person is trans, but what you are proposing is almost certainly incorrect and would not work. Using sex-aligned hormones to cause a person to become cisgender is sometimes tried and does not appear to be effective, and I am not aware of any evidence that transgender people's pre-transition hormone levels are substantially lower than their cisgender peers. Also, this theory would suggest that eunuchs, self-identified men who voluntarily undergo gonad removal, would generally come to identify as women, but this is not the case; Similarly for men who have their testosterone suppressed as part of cancer treatment.
> Also, this theory would suggest that eunuchs, self-identified men who voluntarily undergo gonad removal, would generally come to identify as women, but this is not the case
Not necessarily, there are other possibilities, for example the mechanism might not be lack of male hormones, but elevated female hormones, or environmental contaminant analogs thereof.
< Using sex-aligned hormones to cause a person to become cisgender is sometimes tried and does not appear to be effective
How well documented is this, like when this has been tried has it been done as part of a formal medical study? What I'm really hoping is someone can say something like "here's the randomized controlled trial comparing treatments".
> Also, this theory would suggest that eunuchs, self-identified men who voluntarily undergo gonad removal, would generally come to identify as women, but this is not the case; Similarly for men who have their testosterone suppressed as part of cancer treatment.
Could that be explained by the unfortunate lack of trans acceptance?
I think the simpler explanation is that young kids are doing something they see as trendy, popular, and supported to such an absurd degree that you immediately get internet points and patted on the back for doing literally nothing.
This is not the first time I have seen a question like this asked on HN. It's generally really controversial to ask it because trans individuals are fighting for recognition, rights and humane treatment at the most basic level, so it generally gets taken as a means to be dismissive and attack their cause rather than helpful and suggesting a possible alternative path for at least some trans individuals.
The world has changed quite a lot in recent decades in ways that have substantial impact on how much info is available, how much an individual can explore their own internal identity and myriad other things and it's unfortunately mostly not talked about in those terms.
We also pass out medicalized labels for all kinds of things that used to be handled differently. A child who might have been labeled shy at one time might get diagnosed with selective mutism these days and receive an IEP at school for it.
It's a really complicated topic. This is a big forum. It's not really a question that's likely to get meaningfully hashed out here in some good faith fashion that has some hope of moving things forward, either scientifically or in terms of human rights.
If you are seriously curious about this, I suggest you explore it more quietly than tossing out questions on a front page post on HN. It's not that such questions cannot be asked and explored, it's just this is a really tough way to do it and have it go good places.
Same question is of my interest as well and I find local community to be well openminded compared to other online communities where raising this kind of question will be widely perceived as offence to vocal trans community.
That's one of many spaces where we can openly bring it up and respectfully discuss.
It's quite difficult to explore the topic on your own without hearing other people.
If it's controversial why should it be relegated to back pages?
The front page is the perfect place for such communication, the lack of truly social discourse and individualistic isolation is what creates such reactionary tension while trying to reconcile all the distortions in the zeitgeist of the world.
I think mental stressors of such social failure is whats leading to such childish ideas that adults seem to preoccupy their lives with today, and environmental pollution is definitely contributing to bringing those about.
If you ever need an example of “chilling”, just reread that last paragraph. HN front page is a great place to discuss these issues; there are lots of thoughtful and intelligent minds to iterate on an answer.
No. Trans people have existed for quite a long time. It just happens that the "West" has become more accepting of them, and since it is the "West" that gets most of the media attention it's looking like a new thing with them coming out.
These things are not mutually exclusive. I don't see any evidence that would justify a high degree of confidence that the person you're replying to is wrong.
Why is the "West" in quotes? Typically authors use that to refer to a phrase they're replying to, but parent comment doesn't mention that.
Alternatively, quotes are sometimes used in a dismissive manner, but it would be unusual for an author to be dismissive of a word and yet find value in introducing it into a conversation.
To be fair, so is your dismissive statement in calling it nonsense. Maybe expand on that? I for one have thought the same thing many times and am finding the conversation here quite interesting.
"One thing that I'm genuinely curious about that I've never heard addressed is whether the large increase of people identifying as left-handed could be related to the same factors that are causing ..."
Whenever I read about things like decreasing sperm counts or increases in cancer I always think of the same phrase, "Everything is chemicals." It just really doesn't surprise me knowing how little evaluation is done on chemicals and materials throughout the supply chain.
I believe the period from 1900 to around 2100 will be looked at as this horrible era where we filled our own ecosystem with an almost unimaginable amount of "toxic" chemicals.
Truth is, particularly the US, the only thing we really test consumer products for is lead and mercury. These are the two things we test basically everything for. Other than that it's pretty much don't ask don't tell (and don't test), unless there is a specific piece of legislation that forces such a test. It's starting to change. But the US model is basically, "Do whatever you want. We'll let liability shape policy." So you create a product, put it out and have it do unimaginable damage, then pay for the health and environmental damage you did, and then create legislation around what others should do going forward.
I get the economic reasons for this. But I think we went too far, too fast, and too hard.
> So you create a product, put it out and have it do unimaginable damage, then pay for the health and environmental damage you did, and then create legislation around what others should do going forward.
The very scary part is how many of these chemicals cannot be "put back in the bottle" so to speak. This generation will be long gone, but these chemicals will not just exist on the planet, but exist virtually everywhere in some measurable amount. And we're not even using these chemicals carefully or wisely, we're just carpet absolutely bombing everyday objects with them because they make life fractionally more convenient.
So you create a product, put it out and have it do unimaginable damage, then pay for the health and environmental damage you did
Or not. How often have companies actually had to pay for anything like the actual cost of the damage they have caused to the environment? Are there any cases when they have had to? They sometimes have to compensate a few of the humans involved, but never anything more general than that, and usually nothing approaching the real cost to society or the environment.
Oh, I know. Compensation is the best case scenario. Much more likely is that the entity ultimately responsible doesn't even exist by the time the issue is discovered.
I don't know what the answer is here either. The EU is getting much more aggressive about this, but it's already getting to the point that to bring a new product to market strictly within the law essentially costs infinite dollars.
Aviation still uses leaded fuel and we KNOW how bad it is. But the economic consequence of fully eliminating it is still too great. Literally the one chemical that we know with certainty that there is no safe level of exposure to, is still getting distributed through the air all day every day.
It's funny to me the way Prop65 turned out in some ways. When people were told just how bad absolutely everything is, people actually care less. And now the same thing is happening across the EU in a broad range of categories. Everything has at least 3 or 4 warnings on it. Most people just ignore them completely or look for a product with no warnings—which is probably just lying.
Truth is, particularly the US, the only thing we really test consumer products for is lead and mercury.
That’s not true in the least at least for consumer products like cosmetics or anything ingested or rubbed on the body. Go to FDA.gov and read what it takes to get a consumer product approved.
There is a list of GRAS “generally regarded as safe”. Outside that you can’t use it.
It's funny how fast and well life expectancy improved in that era. Sure sperms are getting less in numbers but at least people don't follow sceptics with narrow mind for centuries so we actually see improvements. Sorry but, people with this mindset would still make us live in caves, literally.
The thesis of the book 'Countdown' is that this is largely due to widespread plastic and other endocrine disrupting chemicals. I believe this is one of the most important risks to humanity, after climate change, and global war. So far, I've taken some lifestyle changes to combat this:
1) Threw out all of my teflon cooking pans
2) Refuse to consume food in heated plastics
3) Throw out teabags (they have plastics). Use loose leaf tea
4) Will soon be throwing out liquid body wash and moisturizers, and replace with simpler oils
This is an emergency, which would probably require we do a revolution on use commercial packaging and plastic. But I don't have much faith, given how entrenched this industry is. Right now, industry is pushing BPA-free packaging, but I strongly suspect BPA-free plastics have similar endocrine effects, we just haven't studied them long enough.
> I strongly suspect BPA-free plastics have similar endocrine effects
Based on what? BPA is the monomer which makes up polycarbonate plastic, and it's a simple molecule which has been known to be an estrogen analogue for nearly 100 years. Other kinds of plastics besides polycarbonate are made from much different kinds of monomers which have no structural similarity to BPA, so why should we assume that the risk carries over? The mechanism that makes BPA dangerous has nothing to do with the fact that it can be turned into a plastic.
This exact thing is discussed in detail in the book OP referenced, it's excellent BTW.
The group of chemicals known as phthalates are added to a huge range of plastics we use at home every day and there is a ton of evidence suggesting that these chemicals are endocrine disruptors. They seem to all have very similar effects WRT endocrine disruption, often substituted for one another when one is found to be bad. This leads to the whack-a-mole effect described by a sibling comment.
Products can be listed as "BPA free" but still have these endocrine disrupting chemicals in them.
Just use glass. I never understood plastic containers. Basically just use shit that existed 50 years ago for food.
Iron pans, store in glass, butter, lard. If you spill stuff on a couch just live with it. Buy leather. Too many things are made because people are lazy. If you have kids don't have nice stuff, it's very easy.
> If you have kids don't have nice stuff, it's very easy.
An unexpected upshot is that in a functional household you can let them
play like actual children, without the cloying anxiety and constant
shrieks of "For Gods sake Tristan and Tarquin, not on the Louis
Vuitton !!"
Glass is expensive to make (and recycle!), heavy, physically larger (since your container is, now, say, 0.250" thick instead of 0.025"), and much more likely to break during shipping, and presents an injury risk when broken.
But the paper the butter/lard is packaged in contains PFAS/plastics, or you can use something else... packaged in plastic! The entire supply chain is polluted in the name of efficiency/cost (reduction of spoilage, less weight etc) and most people live in the most populated places where it's not possible to source diary directly from the animal in to a glass receptacle. A personal change to use glass is something I'm doing and many might want to consider, but so much of the problem is systematic. "Just use glass" is good, but insufficient.
Regarding tea bags, sometimes I see plastic tea bags which are crazy, as they must have a weak structure/large surface and the hot water surely washes out a lot of plastic. I am assuming the normal paper tea bags I get in Germany with a metal clip should be plastic free though, or am I missing something?
Yes we are down to discussing tea bag brands now but as you are saying, it's an emergency :-(
In bulk tea is not only significantly cheaper (not as bad as the tea capsule mark-up, which is in a league oo its own), but also waste is reduced to nothing (only the tea itself, which is perfectly organic).
Rinsing a reusible tea holder doesn't take more time than it takes to dispose off the paper tied to the end separately.
Better check your plumbing because I hate to say it, PEX is everywhere and it's yet to be shown if there are long term effects on having plastic plumbing everywhere. My kitchen water tastes like plastic all the time.
PEX is fine. Water that sat in a PEX pipe is chemically indistinguishable from water held in a test tube, unlike what happens with water in PVC piping. Another indicator of fine-ness is that PE and PP tubing is used extensively in chemical process plants where high purity is required.
I'm fascinated by this. I think the desire to make the necessary lifestyle changes is there, but I question the practicality.
I want to have my foods and beverages untouched by plastics, but how realistic is this currently?
I want to buy bread that's not wrapped in plastic. Is the alternative really to make your own? Even then, can you ensure the ingredients you're sourcing for your own bread starter for example, also not contained in plastic?
Perhaps it isn't feasible to eliminate all plastics in your life, but it begs the question what is good enough to reverse this and it probably starts with what you're consuming.
If you are lucky enough to have a local small bakery near you, then they might use paper bags (mine does), or you can take your own bag. If you only have supermarkets, you can buy things like baguettes, Italian loaves, and sourdough from the deli area inside many supermarkets, and those sometimes come in paper bags, but you have to check whether the paper bag is lined with plastic.
Plastics are so cheap and the paper industry has spent many decades learning how to make different composite blends of paper and plastic to get different characteristics. I had a friend who spent time in that industry and liked to point out how plastics could be in most paper-like products you would see every day. He also emphasized how "actual" paper can be unhealthy due to bleaching and other processing steps that leave byproducts.
I don't know if it's really solved anything, but I switched to loose leaf teas with a stainless steel "tea ball" for individual cups. Now I can instead wonder what metals the global supply chain decided to actually use in that product. ;-)
> Will soon be throwing out liquid body wash and moisturizers, and replace with simpler oils
What are you planning on doing?
I stopped using the Dr Bronner's liquid soap and switched to the their bar soap. For a while I was using the same soap for my hair and then I was doing a "rinse" (apple cider vinegar + some oils) but I got lazy and stopped. I might pick that back up again.
I've been using Aleppo Soap for about two years now. It's a bar soap that's a mix of simply olive oil, laurel oil and soda. It's actually worked wonders for skin problems on my back as well, so I swear by it now. The smell of laurel oil is a bit weird at first but I've grown to really like it. Alternative would be Castile Soap which is the same but without the laurel oil.
Along the same lines as tea-bags, is it possible k-cups have an effect? The keurig machine is already plastic, so does using a reusable cup buy you any benefit?
k-cups get quite warm when in use so I'd avoid it for daily use. Try a french press with a glass container instead. I also threw away my Aeropress for similar reasons.
Forget teabags, what about the bazillion microplastics that we inhale/ingest every day from clothing and carpeting? Especially nice when your coworker's idea of cleaning up their dusty PC is by using canned air on it indoors...
Air filter machine? At least that's what I run a fairly robust unit - it seems to be working. Can't vouch it's grabbing all the microplastics or even that's not blowing out extra. haha. But it is getting a lot of dust out.
I will never understand how so many educated people have such an anti-humanist view of the world.
Humans are awesome, intelligence is awesome. More humans means more amazing things. We are capable as a species of incredible things, and we have the ability to save our planet as well as continuing to grow. We cannot outgrow this planet and colonize other worlds, we cannot solve climate change, nuclear fusion, quantum computers, the great questions of physics without MORE smart people.
I did my Master Degree in Organic Chemistry where we tried to develop a male contraceptive pill. I spend a lot of time studying sperm so here is a short list of thing to avoid regarding sperm quality (not ranked):
1. Eating and drinking from plastics (This includes aluminum cans which are plastic lined) [a]
2. Heating food in ANY type of plastic [a]
3. Caffein intake [b]
4. Sugar intake [c]
5. NOT exercising regularly [d]
6. Alcohol [e]
7. Age [f]
8. Stress [g]
9. Soy products or other natural products containing phytoestrogens [h]
I edited the comment to add point 8 and 9.
Funnily enough these goes for both genders regarding fertility. If you are considering having a child, it takes approximately 7 months for sperm to fully develop so better to change lifestyle sooner rather than later.
With all of these it's a matter of quantity. For instance, bullet point 9 about soy makes me question this list. It turns out that phytoestrogens are much less potent than real estrogen, and the only people that were found to have measurable effects from soy was through a study of older men that ate massive amounts of soy every day in Japan. There is real estrogen in cow's milk, which would have a much stronger effect than soy, yet no one speaks about this. Hops in beer also has more phytoestrogens than soy.
Yes, the data around soy is incredibly underwhelming. A plant like hops does contain more, and more potent, phytoestrogens which many people consume more often than they consume soy. As you mention, milk contains mammalian estrogen which research indicates has notable impact on women’s health in particular (earlier onset of puberty, higher breast and ovarian cancer risk, etc).
Soy seems to fall well within the parameters of “this is fine”, but people readily take any example of it effecting our physiology as evidence of it being harmful. In reality, the evidence of it promoting health overall is extensive and strong.
It could be a component of a plant-based diet for example, which is shown to lead to lower BMI (great for sperm and overall health outcomes). It may reduce sperm concentration to a small degree in large volumes, but the chances are good (statistically speaking) that swapping out something worse in your diet for soy would be a net positive.
Anecdotally I know someone that had their ovaries removed as a child and did not know because their high soy diet provided enough estrogen that they had regular menstruation
I think I'm missing something. On the Results in study [b], they say
> Semen parameters did not seem affected by caffeine intake, at least caffeine from coffee, tea and cocoa drinks, in most studies. Conversely, other contributions suggested a negative effect of cola-containing beverages and caffeine-containing soft drinks on semen volume, count and concentration.
If tea and coffee don't cause an effect, but cola and soft drinks do, doesn't that imply it's sugar, not caffeine?
There is an ongoing discussion on the effect of caffein on sperm quality. There are articles which describes a possible route for DNA damage to the sperm from caffein https://www.cureus.com/articles/109365-effect-of-stress-and-.... From personal (lab) experience there is a clear difference to the smell of sperm from a coffee to a non coffee drinker, so it ends up there somehow. Whether it truly has an effect is still being discussed.
Could be correlated to issue 1 with plastic containers. In the US, soda generally comes in aluminum cans or 2L plastic bottles, whereas coffee and tea aren't.
Anyways, I still think sedentary lifestyles and stress play a larger role than plastics, but those are harder to isolate and control for researchers.
Well, the two sentences following your quote read:
> 2. As regards sperm DNA defects, caffeine intake seemed associated with aneuploidy and DNA breaks, but not with other markers of DNA damage
> 3. Finally, male coffee drinking was associated to prolonged time to pregnancy in some, but not all, studies.
And then goes on to conclude:
> The literature suggests that caffeine intake, possibly through sperm DNA damage, may negatively affect male reproductive function.
The whole abstract points at weak/inconclusive results, but we're definitely talking about caffeine here, not sugar.
Ah yes, that study of 99 (predominantly overweight) men from an infertility clinic that definitely shows soy affects sperm count.
As far as I'm aware the evidence just isn't there with respect to soy and cherry picking the single study that shows some potential link is just helping fuel a dietary myth, would be my view.
This is particularly important when correcting misimpressions. If your comment is neutral, the neutral reader can absorb the new information fairly easily. But if you're hostile (as with "ah yes, that, definitely that"), then you're also signaling a pre-existing battle. The neutral reader gets confused by these mixed signals and feels caught in crossfire, which is not a state that's good for learning.
The upside of battle language is that it rallies any readers who are already on your side, but this is not a good move in the HN game. We want curious conversation here, not escalating intensity or repetition of already hardened positions. The value of curious conversation can perhaps be measured by how much the participants, including the silent readers, move in the process.
Perhaps the correlation is the other way around. Men with less testosterone (and therefore a lower sperm count) consume more products with soy, which is common in a vegan diet.
Not saying this is the case, just pointing out where this could be coming from.
Comments like this from commenters like this are why I love HN.
Does BPA-free plastic improve anything? What about containers of non-prepared food? I can see not eating directly from any, but I think it's pretty hard in the developed world to rid ourselves of plastics entirely in the storage of foodstuffs.
Also, do we know whether the changes in sperm quality you mention affect congenital childhood maladies? (I realize this is probably beyond your field somewhat.)
BPA is merely one of many endocrine disrupting chemicals found in plastics. Oftentimes BPA is replaced by BPS or BPF to get that coveted "BPA-free!" label, ignoring the fact that the replacements are JUST AS BAD^1. It's a minefield.
Silicone tends to not have endocrine disruptors because it doesn't need plasticizers.
All plastics are endocrine disruptors [a], though the an easy filter is softer = worse. If anything food related is in contact with plastic there will be plastic in the food. The pH and temperature of the food have a big impact on plastic leaching.
And sperm quality mostly affect fertility. The egg and the body if the woman is incredibly effective at selecting quality sperm and rejecting bad sperm. There are multiple guidance systems for sperm which selects for good quality [b].
I'd want to know that drinks aren't full of that stuff regardless of the end-user container material, before worrying about it. They're surely exposed to tons of plastics in the manufacturing process, including at times when various components are heated.
Even water supplies in a house will typically have been in contact with plastics—at the treatment plant, in the house for any modern house (they're pretty much all PEX now, since it's stupid-easy and fast to install, which means it's very cheap), in the hot water heater if they're any hot water mixed in (ever start with a hot tap for water you're gonna boil?), if you've got a filter system that's almost certainly full of plastic, and so on.
You'd also have to avoid canned goods of all kinds, not just bottled/canned drinks. Store-bought canned foods have plastic liners, which all but completely solved problems with canned-good spoilage that we used to have, but does mean ~all canned goods are sitting in plastic, not metal, effectively. Glass-canned might be better but are usually more expensive and there's still plastic on the inside of the lids (how much that matters, I do not know—I'd expect very little, but sometimes these things are surprising, for all I know those inside-the-lids bits use exceptionally awful plastic or something).
Or titanium[0]. Neat fact about anodizing titanium: the colors are the result of the thickness of the resulting oxide layer and how it refracts different wavelengths of light[1].
Switch to PS5 + Mountain Dew. 30 minutes before sex, microwave a cookie in tupperware and drink a beer. For added protection, download the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV. With an expanded free trial which you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award winning Heavensward expansion up to level 60 for free with no restrictions on playtime.
This more or less reads like any health instruction (except for the soy products). Would you have a quantity as to how one can change plastic intake by following these recommendations? How strict does one need to be? - I mean basically everything you buy is wrapped in plastic...
This isn't based on anything except for intuition, take it or leave it :).
Like most things - eliminating the highest points of contact likely would suffice.
Daily habits are the ones that matter.
Are you drinking from a plastic water bottle everyday?
Is your water filter plastic?
Are you drinking coffee from a keurig or similar?
Are you storing food in plastic containers?
Are you heating food in plastic containers?
Are you using plastic utencils?
Are you using plastic lined pans?
Are you buying food wrapped in plastic?
Etc etc.
It's a good starting place...then get your sperm tested, it's not prohibitively expensive.
I cannot recommend highly enough having a set of glass bottles[1] at home. Fill them at the tap (or wherever), refrigerate them, take them to the gym, in the car, serve to guests. Point is to have many, keep a rotation going. Has greatly reduced reliance on plastic.
Gyms often ban glass bottles because of the hazard they create when dropped/shattered.
I personally use a hard (i.e. not squeezable) plastic bottle, that I fill with cold/cool water just before use. As long as the water has not been sitting in the bottle for days or in the sun or in a hot car, etc. I don't think there is enough potential chemical leeching to worry about.
Agree 100%. I don't eat foods with added processed sugars. I treat sugar like a spice, just throw a pinch in with a few recipes. Sugar is in just about everything in the supermarkets, and is screwing up the entire population.
It is surprising to me that consuming dairy products is not on that list. After all milk is produced by lactating animals (whose lactation is sometimes induced by feeding the animal artificial estrogen). It seems like a fairly direct vector to me.
Worth noting is that sperm concentration was the only notable impact of soy consumption, leaving other measured aspects of sperm health unaffected (notably sperm motility, a critical factor in assessing sperm health).
Growing up we never microwaved food in tupperware, but we do it daily now. None of me or my siblings (8 of us) had any sort of mental issues (and it wasn't a matter of not being diagnosed), but all of our children have so many mental issues (depression, anxiety, pulling hair out, ADHD, etc.) that we have asked each other if it could possibly be something in the environment - even though all of us live in different states/cities. Maybe we all reheat food in tuperware and eat/drink from plastics.
Thanks for sharing, these studies are extremely interesting!
> Because we can identify existing, relatively inexpensive monomers and additives that do not exhibit EA, even when stressed, we believe that plastics having comparable physical properties but that do not release chemicals having detectable EA could be produced at minimal additional cost.
The only question that I have left: Why aren't we doing this already???
Just a small note: I noticed that I read your disclaimer that it's not in ranked order, and then went on curious to see what is the #1 cause, and had to remind myself that no it's not ranked. It might help stupid readers like me to use dashes or similar for lists when the order isn't particular, rather than numbering the items!
From what I understand, there is somewhat of a threshold in terms of how much fructose can be digested in your gut vs requiring your liver to get involved. It depends on a lot of factors (body size obviously, your overall calorie intake, some genetic factors, etc), but in general of you're only consuming a few grams of fructose and it's buffered by fiber, you're probably not exceeding that threshold. Fruit fits that bill, unless you're being weird and consuming a whole lot of sugary fruit.
There is no real difference between eating food to which refined sugar has been added and eating sweet fruits. The sugar is not bound to anything and it is released in the fruit juice when the fruit is chewed, so it is not digested more slowly than when eating a sweetened cake with the same proportion of sugar (but the cakes are frequently made much sweeter than the fresh fruits).
The great danger that has been created by the availability of cheap refined sugar and similar sweeteners, like HFCS, is that it has become extremely easy to create food that has an unnaturally high concentration of sugar or fructose and that it has become extremely easy to eat an excessive amount of sugar per day.
Most cultivated fruits contain around 10% sugar, while a few are sweeter than that, with up to around 16% sugar, like grapes, fresh figs or fresh dates.
When eating only fresh fruits or defrozen fruits, it is unlikely to eat too much sugar, but it is still possible.
It is recommended that the daily intake of sugar should not exceed around 50 g (i.e. around 25 g fructose).
That corresponds to around 300 g of grapes, or around 500 g of apples or pears or blueberries (or most other fruits), so eating amounts less or equal with these every day should be safe.
On the other hand, a single chocolate might contain over 60 g of sugar. Most industrially-made food, including juices or yogurts or breakfast cereals, contains excessive amounts of sugar, so many people eat daily 100 to 200 g of sugar, or even more, without being aware of this.
When eating dried fruits or honey, it is also possible to eat too much sugar without a lot of effort, e.g. around 80 g of most dried fruits is enough to provide the maximum recommended daily intake of sugar.
Life is weird to me. Humans have one of the longest lifespans among mammals, yet we seem to start breaking down not all that far into it. We don't tend to consider 35 "old", as we regularly live 80+ years, and even if you consider the "generally well functioning" span of your life to be your years up to 60 or so, 35 is barely past half way.
The soy study is far from conclusive - it showed an inverse association between soy intake and sperm concentration, but mainly in "overweight and obese men," and "total sperm count, ejaculate volume, sperm motility, [and] sperm morphology" remained the same. NEJM Journal Watch stated the findings were inconclusive and recommended against suggesting dietary changes [0].
Either way, soy vs. meat is not the dichotomy it's sometimes presented as in political narratives. You can eliminate both and still have a huge number of healthy world foods to choose from. The Mediterranean I had recently was delicious and soy and meat free.
Half of the west eat and live as if they were attempting a slow suicide. Take care of your body and you'll be healthy well into your 60s, unless you're afflicted by outlier events but you can't do anything about these, maximise what you can, fate will do the rest
In an episode of Succession, Logan was drinking a smoothie that contained Maca Root, Almonds, and Walnuts apparently to boost his Sperm count/chances of having a kid according to Willa.
Your list is more of "Dont's". Are there "Dos", based on diet or certain foods that increase the count significantly?
What a list like this misses is some sense of proportionality. We don't need to stress over everything that causes fluctuations on sperm count. The science is not there yet, but personally I am going to bet >50% of the reason for decreased sperms count is because of high protein diets (which correlate to lower testosterone) and high BMI.
My wife and I have a beautiful daughter about to turn 2. But she wouldn't have existed if it weren't for IVF (in vitro fertilization). Had to stab her stomach with needles for a while to make hormones to mass produce eggs and then they took my sperm to put into her eggs and see which ones took. Five viable pairings happened. Three were put into her and out came the one kid. Other two are in cryo for future use, and hopefully we can try them too one day soon. I was hesitant about IVF when I was younger, but now I recommend it to anyone who's having difficulty conceiving. The doctor showed us my sperm in a petri dish. They were tiny in number and so lazy to move compared to a video that the doctor indicated to be more healthy sperm. Whatever lifestyle changes I need to make to make my sperm better, not sure it can be done overnight and my wife was 38 at the time of conception.
Kid is beautiful, stubborn, independently-minded, cute, all of it. Would not trade her for the world.
If you're having difficulty conceiving, please consider IVF. We tried for 3 years the natural way with no dice.
Another lesson from your story (similar to many of my friends’) is to just have kids younger. It sounds like you started at around 35 — if people started at 30, even, fertility is higher.
Yep, I can confirm this based on personal experience with a gynecologist telling my wife that at 35 the pregnancy is considered a "geriatric pregnancy" (apparently some docs now call it "AMA"...advanced maternal age).
This shocked both of us, frankly. We were aware of what the actuarial tables will tell you regarding birth defect rates related to maternal age, but hearing the term geriatric in your mid-thirties is quite shocking. I'm ignorant of any data around paternal age and sperm count (assume it goes down...no idea the rate), but the docs do tend to focus on maternal age quite a bit regarding possible defects and fertility.
Nonetheless we were able to conceive in our late 30s without help or any trouble. Our baby is super healthy. Apparently we lucked out.
We have a societal problem when the rational individual choice (to provide your children the best head start) is to wait until your fertility declines to have children.
I mean, a lot of people may not have the financial option to have had kids younger. Like, the last 15 years have included two "completely upend your life" level crises, along with a lot of smaller crises that could have swept up someone.
I started at 24 - certainly regret nothing, but I also can't say it was the smoothest path :D Trying to provide and care while being new to the job market was quite a ride.
There's been some changes to make having kids less of a challenge in recent years - at least in Europe. But it still seems like there's a long way to go, especially in terms of corporate cultures that, in my experience, don't really know what to do with young parents.
Fertility isn't the only consideration with having children when you're old.
Skin elasticity and athleticism decreases with age, and that translates into worse tearing, and more difficult births, longer recovery, and more trouble keeping up with a baby after all that.
Then, on top of all that, your parents are entering their sunset years rather where you have to help them rather than having grandparents young enough to help you with your kids.
It's also linked to things like low birth weight. I sure wish my wife & I had started earlier.
I agree. We shouldn’t pressure people to make children early, but make sure they understand the consequences of delaying. I’m surrounded by couples of 30-35 year old that are struggling to have children. They had no idea it would be so hard.
LOL, didn't get married until later, wouldn't have been possible for me back then. Takes two to tango. Which is of course another societal question. Why are people finding it difficult to partner up and settle down earlier in life? I know what my reasons were, I was idiotic, picky, shy, you name it. https://xkcd.com/439/
A long time ago, my spouse and I moved to Massachusetts because they mandated that Insurance companies must cover IVF. I got a job at a small startup, but just as we were getting started with IVF, they got acquired by a California megacorp. I thought I'd have to quit, but it turned out that the acquiring company's insurance covered IVF.
Back then, IVF Drs. were measured on their success rate so they wanted to put in three blastocysts (fertilized eggs). With fears of triplets in my head, I talked my spouse down to two. My twins are adults now and totally awesome :~)
I have a medical condition where I have no vas deferens. Sadly, IVF didn't work. I don't say that to ask for sympathy, but to say that my wife went through the same series of needles, etc, without the payoff at the end. (Additionally I had to have a surgery to remove sperm from the testes, which was painful to recover from as you might imagine.) Anyone who embarks on the financial and emotional cost of IVF needs to be fully aware of the possibility that it won't work.
Note that the CDC collects statistics on assisted reproductive technology success rates. Here is the 2019 report: https://www.cdc.gov/art/reports/2019/pdf/2019-Report-ART-Fer... . See especially Figure 3 on page 29 (Percentage of embryo transfers that resulted in live-birth delivery, by patient age and egg or embryo source). There is more data, including from individual clinics, at https://www.cdc.gov/art/artdata/index.html .
We were looking down the barrel of IVF after everything else didn't work but all sperm and eggs etc looked normal. Turns out that my wife had an immune response (so-called "natural killer cells") that was preventing successful pregnancy.
Drugs for that were simple and very mild (and cheap!) and within 2 months we were pregnant for the first child. For the second child it was just 1 month! This was all naturally conceived after a very long period of nothing happening.
IVF seemed very invasive with potentially low success rates but conversely high risk of twins etc if it did work. I'd recommend getting the immunology investigated if people are suggesting IVF for you - for us it was utterly straight forward and simple once the diagnosis was made and the drugs prescribed. Google for Dr Shehata in the UK.
Glad it worked out! My daughter is 8mo now and we had concerns going into the 'getting pregnant' phase.
If you can't afford IVF or want to do it another way, there are things you can try to do before you start trying to avoid surprises - the main goal is to try to assess your status so you can align expecatations. It's frustrating to 'get started' and think 'it should take about X months' and then not seeing it happen (huh sounds familiar to product work?).
First, we always think it's the women's fault (or at least society defaults to that nowadays for sure). Men can go to a lab and get your sperm tested and check your testosterone levels. There are actionables to improve this in >6 months (not sure if less).
My wife did all sorts of stuff: checked hormone levels, managed her endo with excercise/diet/stress-management, got her period into one of those tracking apps to the point it actually predicted when ovulation happened (corroborated with home test kits).
In summary, I'm not trying to deal out a recipe here - just making a point that having a lower-stress attempt at getting pregnant can take a while but something can be done if you want to avoid cost of IVF or misalignment of expectations when 'trying' (we started ~preping - wife more so than me - 2 years in advance bc my wife had endo).
As an addendum, for us IUI (intrauterine insemination) was a complete waste of money. My sperm counts were largely fine and it might make sense if you believe it’s your primary issue - for unexplained infertility I don’t believe it makes sense.
We tried IUI to conceive our second child, and after a couple of months of trying, my wife got tired of it, we stopped temporarily, and just then she got pregnant.
No idea if IUI helped or not, but we got a great kid out of it.
This sounds obvious, but apparently isn’t to a lot of younger people. 38 is considered quite old to start having children (yes it happens, but it’s called a “geriatric pregnancy” for a reason), and I’m sure it contributed to the difficulties conceiving.
A lot of young folks have been convinced that child birth can be put off more or less indefinitely while you pursue a career, but the longer you wait, the more difficult it becomes. Just another piece in the “gee, why are birth rates declining?” puzzle.
>A lot of young folks have been convinced that child birth can be put off more or less indefinitely
Young folks haven't been convinced of shit, it's just literally not an option. Most young people are barely scraping by, can't buy a home, can't rent a medium sized apartment, have terrible health care, unreliable or unpredictable scheduling, etc etc.
"Oh we made do in earlier times" Yes and a lot of the younger generations feel those scars every day, they feel the anxiety from not having enough money in the household, and develop scarcity mindsets that they will fight for the rest of their lives. Of course they don't want to do that to their own kids.
Let alone even being in a relationship at all, one that's stable enough that you genuinely believe you will be together for at least 20 years.
Young adults aren't putting off kids "to pursue a career", we are trying desperately to survive in a world that was picked clean by previous generations and kneecapped before we got a chance at it.
IVF is expensive. Some friends of ours tried it but it didn't work. They were out $30K and finally just made peace with the fact that they weren't going to have kids.
We did IVF and have a wonderful little boy. Would do it again to have our kid, but my goodness, the expense was overwhelming. We had to go into a non-trivial amount of debt to do IVF and I don’t know how anyone makes it work (short of what we did) we tried for 8 years to conceive naturally.
Tangentially, we spent some time looking at adoption and the total cost going through an agency I think would’ve been about the same.
We had some fertility issues as well and while IUI and time worked for the two children we have IVF was looked into. Before the whole thing I didn't understand why people didn't just adopt. But once looking into the sky high costs and uncertainty of adoption I understood why IVF is popular. It is expensive and uncertain as well, but much less so.
Adopting is hard. I've tried to convince my wife that we should adopt because I've always wanted to adopt anyway, but she's scared I'm not taking it seriously enough. She says with adoption, you need to emotionally commit more than you would with your own blood because the natural instinct isn't there. She's scared I can't handle the responsibility and she might be scared of it too. She said we can have the talk again after I prove I can be a good dad with our own blood first. She doesn't want to be the mom that loves and handles everything while the dad doesn't care.
If you're in the US, it's possible it can be covered by insurance. My wife and I are in the process of doing IVF. Though it can be very expensive - the injection medications cost a total of $16K. Thankfully, it's covered by my health insurance and I had a $100 co-pay. PGTA screening is not covered by my insurance and to my knowledge costs about $1k. Other parts in the IVF process vary in cost but most is covered by my insurance with a $45 co-pay.
Women have been having kids past 30 since the dawn of humanity. The only difference is that now women tend to be older at the time of their FIRST pregnancy. Before the modern era women would start having kids in their late teens or early 20s and continue doing so until menopause in many causes, so that's up til 45-55. Plenty of women are perfectly capable of having healthy kids past 30 and even past 40.
That's a myth that the medical establishment wants to sell you. Women are fine and have children with no problem, long past that artificial "deadline".
I don't think that is how IVF works, you can't induce an adult female to produce eggs in any medically approved way. Apparently mammals are born with a finite number of eggs that just get used up as they get older.
> Ultimately, Levine and Swan say that local and global actions are needed to reduce or get rid of these chemicals in our environments.
I think it's unfair to characterize Swan's take as trying to 'offload all responsibility to "consumers"'. Presumably the "get rid of these chemicals in our environments" doesn't just intend "our" to only mean some hyper-vigilant subset of the population. One can advocate for removing these from the marketplace while simultaneously having the stance that for now, in the world we actually live in, people can take some steps to limit their exposure. People are always going to ask "but what can I do _now_ to protect myself and my family?" and it's not unreasonable for an expert in the field to try to have an answer.
Consumers can't compete on an individual level against giant mega corporations actively obfuscating information from them even if they had lots of free time and weren't overburdened already. And corporations can lobby to even get obvious terms redefined (Assembled in America) so everyone needs to understand lawyer speak to even make sense of the information they do receive.
And that is without even getting into misinformation campaigns.
I agree with you, but I don't know how helpful this will end up being.
Endocrine disruptors are airborne and globally ubiquitous in the form of micro-plastics. All drinking water in the world is contaminated with it. [1]
I'm really not meaning to be dramatic on this, but we've completely missed the boat on this one while we were arguing about climate change, and it's much too late to do anything about it now.[2]
I'll not be here to see either way, and it's unlikely anyone else currently alive will unless Ray Kurzweil was right this whole time, but IMHO (I.e. take this with the pinch of salt a random Internet comment warrants) it's likely humanity as a species only has a few hundred years left at most.
This isn't meant to be doom-mongering, it's just that while we worry about some dramatic cataclysmic event like a nuclear war, a pandemic or a meteor strike, the science seems to indicate it's much more likely that humanity will die off with a quiet whimper in a few generations.
It's worth noting that this is not a mainstream view, and that the UN projects a level population out to 2300 [3] - I just don't see that the science backs up this claim, especially given recent understandings of fertility decline.
As another commenter pointed out, plasticizers are not plastics. It's disingenuous to link health issues with plasticizers to microplastics. Additionally, we should not extrapolate concerns with BPA plastics releasing chemicals when placed under specific stressors (e.g. heat) to all plastics in the environment. There have been no studies I'm aware of that link microplastics to endocrine disruption. Even the first article you linked specifically states that the primary concern with microplastics is likely a physical (not chemical) one.
The slowdown in population growth has been a topic of world leaders for quite some time. This isn't a topic of interest because world leaders are somehow concerned about the cause (e.g. chemicals in the environment). In fact, the cause is well known and due to fairly straight forward anthropologic factors. As quality of life improves, population growth declines. This happens in nature as well. Populations under stress tend to reproduce more. World leaders are interested in modeling/understanding this as it has macroeconomic effects (e.g. Japan's decade long struggles with stock market decline). This is also why the US and the west in general has went so heavy on quantitative easing for the past decade. They are trying to stave off deflation. Unfortunately, COVID and the associated supply shocks caused that plan to go off the rails a bit...
Finally, I'm not sure what climate change policy has to do with any of this.
I'll let the chemistry people comment on this one but phtalates are used as a 'plasticizer' they are not plastic itself as in a micro-plastic bead
I am not sure how much of these plasticizers survives on the microplastic that you refer to. in our water supply or in airborne polyester fibers? Those are major sources of microplastic contamination but I am not sure they are major sources of _plasticizer_ contamination.
In this case there is mounting evidence against phthalates and bisphenols as endocrine disruptors. This is the stuff getting into your blood stream through ingestion or skin absorption mostly from plastic containers, hygiene products, etc.
This is one of the problems, we are missing studies that can demonstrate sources and source contribution to this problem.
>the science seems to indicate it's much more likely that humanity will die off with a quiet whimper in a few generations.
You didn't include a link to support the claim that humans only have "a few hundred years left at most". I think this is extremely unlikely to be true. What is your recommended reading?
Environmental may be one such reason but we should never omit obesity as a cause for any health problem.
> A bidirectional relationship between testosterone and obesity underpins this association indicated by the hypogonadal-obesity cycle and evidence weight loss can lead to increased testosterone levels.
Yeah trying to avoid toxic chemicals as a consumer is nearly impossible. We've been doing a home renovation and have been attempting to use zero or low VOC products and it's incredibly difficult and expensive. The effort it requires to do the research and sourcing for every product you use in your life is basically impossible for most people.
Blaming individuals is the most successful strategy for keeping status quo while allowing activists to flourish. So go buy metal straws, recycle your plastic, eat less meat, cut up six pack holders, and be "a savvy customer"!
This is a "non-constructive proof". It's trivial to say "regulators need to get serious" but it's non-trivial to actually get that to happen. With the current corrupt+uninformed regulators in place, just pushing them to "regulate more" results in a mix of regulatory capture and/or uninformed regulation made by non-technical experts. How do you propose that actually useful regulation get enacted?
Isn't this just pure BS tho? No "savvy consumer" can really avoid these chemicals. Merely by being outside in a major city or indoors in a modern home or wearing modern synthetic fiber clothing, etc, etc you are likely getting exposed. Short of literally making your own wool clothing in the middle of the woods you can't reasonably escape this stuff.
Why do people even buy "most hygiene products"? They're all bullshit, bad-smelling chemical industry effluent. A gallon of concentrated Just Plain Old Soap® retails for $40 and stands dilutions 10-to-1, is enough for all personal and household uses for an entire family for years.
I can't count how many times I have ordered a mineral water (to avoid chlorine in tap water to which I am sensitive) and received it in a glass contaminated with a PFAS-coated paper straw.
Additionally that water probably came from a plastic bottle.
Lately I've been seeing straws made from a compostable plant based polyester. It's unclear whether they are still using problematic plasticizers in them.
Consumers can voluntarily reduce their exposure to phthalates AND the industry can be regulated. Regulators aren't going to save consumers if consumers refuse to get educated or practice restraint.
I've been a very health/environmentally conscious consumer for 30 years, but I don't have time to keep up with every possible thing, nor do I want to be exhausting myself trying to urge other consumers to shift their buying choices ever so slightly. Expecting consumers to do everything is market fundamentalism and it's often a meme put around by industry to shirk responsibility. My environmental footprint is already way below average. I'm tired of sacrificing my life on the altar of market economics waiting for everyone else to catch up, while industry pours money in lobbying, PR, and advertising to maintain an increasingly dystopian status quo.
> Regulators aren't going to save consumers if consumers refuse to get educated or practice restraint
That's literally the job of regulators, see asbestos or cancer causing pesticides that have been banned or severely restricted. Do you expect all consumers to have degrees in chemistry and read papers to make risk assessments about the 10,000s of chemicals they come into contact daily?
I get reliably downvoted for suggesting this, but we need vastly better labelling across the board. We give companies a lot of leeway when it comes to selling things to put in and on our bodies without us, owners of said bodies, having any way of finding out what the hell is in their products, or where they came from, or how they were processed. It absolutely baffles me how everyone doesn't want considerably more information and transparency about our foods and cosmetics.
Please drop these off-topic distractions from your HN comments, especially bits about upvoting and downvoting, which are such a common source of meta-noise that the site guidelines specifically exclude it: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I would be massively in favour of adding a QR Code that details as much as possible (without giving away trade secrets if that is possible) where and how something is sourced and then adding how it was processed. Much like you get a track and trace with a package.
> I get reliably downvoted for suggesting this, but we need vastly better labelling across the board
These companies shouldn't be able to use these ingredients in the first place, labels or not. It's not our job to read lists of 30+ ingredients and their wikipedia entries to know if we're at risk or not
For what it's worth there are people working on this problem! I work for one - https://choosefinch.com/ - which is a Chrome extension that scores products on amazon.com (and other retailers soon!) for, among other things, harmful compounds.
"Ignorance is bliss" is safe, zero-effort, and anxiety-free - until it isn't.
And when it isn't - both the "not just a river in Egypt" and "blame some handy & culturally appropriate boogeyman" strategies are popular and low-effort. And usually enjoy widespread social support.
I 100% agree. It blew my mind that vanilla extract is not extracted from vanilla, and they're allowed to label artificial vanilla as vanilla extract because real vanilla extract tastes different, and people are already used to the other flavor matching the name. There are tons of examples and loopholes like this.
I have a friend who gets irrationally angry about stuff like this. “People should just do their own research!” I’d like to think I’m of above average intelligence and I have no idea how I would ever go about verifying the safety of every item I buy for my family. It’s just not feasible. What if, instead, we have a group of people who enforce safety standards and we can place some trust in them to help keep us all safe?
> It absolutely baffles me how everyone doesn't want considerably more information and transparency about our foods and cosmetics.
People do want that, which is why organic food is rising in popularity, why vegan cosmetics are a thing... the problem is politicians are bribed by big industry influence to not regulate too hard.
Readit News
- Tons of popular and legal products/chemicals are "endocrine disruptors"[1] (fancy term for mess with hormones).
- The FDA/EPA doesn't deny that, they don't themselves even really require tests for long-term health effects in humans (too difficult). Instead they give animals a 1000x+ dose and look for immediate drastic effects (this is abbreviated "LOAEL"). That's the reason we have a xenoestrogen in the lining of soda cans (BPA), because we're trusting that tiny doses must be negligible, which isn't necessarily a valid assumption [2].
- The attitude on a lot of chemicals is "Safe until proven guilty," but when some of these chemicals are suspect (e.g. pesticides) instead of a public announcement they are pulled from public use quietly prior to the point of definitive evidence. New/similar ones can be introduced with presumption of safe until proven guilty. (Search PFOAs if you want to get a sense of how ineffective our protection mechanisms are)
I came to the conclusion a radically new model is necessary, the EPA/FDA need to design models to test for fertility effects, perhaps multigenerationally, in their studies (fruit flies?) quickly.
My bet is within 20 years we'll see it as the more immediate problem than global warming.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor
[2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.2203/dose-response....
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document/EPRS_ID...
You already lost.
I don't want to diminish the importance of a paradigm shift in how regulators treat various chemicals, but I don't think this will be anywhere near as severe and immediate threat as climate change.
Ultimately, if there is a substantial pool of people who's fertility is not adversely impacted by some yet to be identified chemical, then it will be those people who's genes will pass on. Within a generation we as a species will have developed resistance to at least the impact on fertility by some unregulated chemical.
But what if it's some other random thing that also gives people heart attacks?
On the other hand, people in more industrial countries are exposed to different chemicals (BPA, FPOAs, flame retardants, food additives, etc.), than people in more agrarian countries (field chemicals, like fertilizers and pesticides). These chemicals are all harmful, but it's hard to blame a single class of them for a global problem.
If I had to pick a truly universal issue, I would say childhood and young adult obesity. Surprisingly, obesity is growing rapidly even in countries where hunger is also a problem.
You have to carefully read product labels, 99.9% of products don't contain any info about EDC's, you have to specially seek out ones that are labeled as phthalate-free, BPA-free, etc.
Biggest offenders are in the kitchen and bathroom. Shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, perfume, are big offenders. There are special versions of these products you can find but they don't usually work as well. Most things that are scented have phthalates. Pretty much any food that comes in a flexible plastic container, most dairy and eggs have it as well (dairy because of the flexible plastic tubing used when pumping milk).
One example of a source for milk: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23138015/
If you want a more thorough list, the NIH compiled this
---
What are some common endocrine disruptors?
Bisphenol A (BPA) — used to make polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins, which are found in many plastic products including food storage containers
Dioxins — produced as a byproduct in herbicide production and paper bleaching, they are also released into the environment during waste burning and wildfires
Perchlorate — a by-product of aerospace, weapon, and pharmaceutical industries found in drinking water and fireworks
Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) — used widely in industrial applications, such as firefighting foams and non-stick pan, paper, and textile coatings
Phthalates — used to make plastics more flexible, they are also found in some food packaging, cosmetics, children’s toys, and medical devices
Phytoestrogens — naturally occurring substances in plants that have hormone-like activity, such as genistein and daidzein that are in soy products, like tofu or soy milk
Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE) — used to make flame retardants for household products such as furniture foam and carpets
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) — used to make electrical equipment like transformers, and in hydraulic fluids, heat transfer fluids, lubricants, and plasticizers
Triclosan — may be found in some anti-microbial and personal care products, like liquid body wash
Well, that's not quite accurate. (a) there isn't a large increase of trans people, historically speaking, just folks being more open and honest about their status recently, since it's become marginally less punished in a few specific places, than it has been prior, and (b) in recent years, trans men or transmasc folks are the largest group of those new influx, not trans women.
> There are massive amounts of compounds in our environment that are endocrine disrupters or mimic sex hormones like estrogen
If people were getting estrogen in the environment that they didn't want in any amount meaningful enough to effect them, you'd wouldn't expect to see more trans women (trans women, generally speaking, are usually deficient in estrogen), you'd expect to see more dysphoric men. You'd expect to see a sharp increase in cis men presenting with ED and gynecomastia and such. (Which, to be fair, is a thing we're seeing. But so far, appears to be mainly linked to increasing obesity rates)
> Maybe they would even benefit more from hormone treatments in the opposite direction than the "gender affirming" treatments.
This is barbaric if you think about it for more than 5 seconds. So barbaric in fact, that it's been outlawed in many nations -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_therapy for more info
> This is barbaric if you think about it for more than 5 seconds.
It is barbaric to not even consider a different point of view because it opposes your religion (yes, I think it is a religion at this point)
Sorry if I appear harsh, but I believe that in a couple of decades we will look back at what the pharma industry is doing to "trans" people as we look back on lobotomy now.
It does feel like I've seen more men with more than just regular moobs, who aren't necessarily otherwise severely obese. The trans women I know have less shapely breasts even though they're deliberately taking hormones, and it's a bit bizarre. Not a huge amount, but enough to notice. I'd be willing to believe also that there's a contingent of those that are trans men too, but I just mean it's actually more bizarre to see someone who is otherwise just a cis man with like C or D cups
Not necessarily, there are other possibilities, for example the mechanism might not be lack of male hormones, but elevated female hormones, or environmental contaminant analogs thereof.
How well documented is this, like when this has been tried has it been done as part of a formal medical study? What I'm really hoping is someone can say something like "here's the randomized controlled trial comparing treatments".
Could that be explained by the unfortunate lack of trans acceptance?
The world has changed quite a lot in recent decades in ways that have substantial impact on how much info is available, how much an individual can explore their own internal identity and myriad other things and it's unfortunately mostly not talked about in those terms.
We also pass out medicalized labels for all kinds of things that used to be handled differently. A child who might have been labeled shy at one time might get diagnosed with selective mutism these days and receive an IEP at school for it.
It's a really complicated topic. This is a big forum. It's not really a question that's likely to get meaningfully hashed out here in some good faith fashion that has some hope of moving things forward, either scientifically or in terms of human rights.
If you are seriously curious about this, I suggest you explore it more quietly than tossing out questions on a front page post on HN. It's not that such questions cannot be asked and explored, it's just this is a really tough way to do it and have it go good places.
Same question is of my interest as well and I find local community to be well openminded compared to other online communities where raising this kind of question will be widely perceived as offence to vocal trans community.
That's one of many spaces where we can openly bring it up and respectfully discuss.
It's quite difficult to explore the topic on your own without hearing other people.
The front page is the perfect place for such communication, the lack of truly social discourse and individualistic isolation is what creates such reactionary tension while trying to reconcile all the distortions in the zeitgeist of the world.
I think mental stressors of such social failure is whats leading to such childish ideas that adults seem to preoccupy their lives with today, and environmental pollution is definitely contributing to bringing those about.
Alternatively, quotes are sometimes used in a dismissive manner, but it would be unusual for an author to be dismissive of a word and yet find value in introducing it into a conversation.
"One thing that I'm genuinely curious about that I've never heard addressed is whether the large increase of people identifying as left-handed could be related to the same factors that are causing ..."
https://twitter.com/ithayla/status/1410339332477517826
I believe the period from 1900 to around 2100 will be looked at as this horrible era where we filled our own ecosystem with an almost unimaginable amount of "toxic" chemicals.
Truth is, particularly the US, the only thing we really test consumer products for is lead and mercury. These are the two things we test basically everything for. Other than that it's pretty much don't ask don't tell (and don't test), unless there is a specific piece of legislation that forces such a test. It's starting to change. But the US model is basically, "Do whatever you want. We'll let liability shape policy." So you create a product, put it out and have it do unimaginable damage, then pay for the health and environmental damage you did, and then create legislation around what others should do going forward.
I get the economic reasons for this. But I think we went too far, too fast, and too hard.
The very scary part is how many of these chemicals cannot be "put back in the bottle" so to speak. This generation will be long gone, but these chemicals will not just exist on the planet, but exist virtually everywhere in some measurable amount. And we're not even using these chemicals carefully or wisely, we're just carpet absolutely bombing everyday objects with them because they make life fractionally more convenient.
Nat Geo had a good write up last year: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/pfas-cont...
Or not. How often have companies actually had to pay for anything like the actual cost of the damage they have caused to the environment? Are there any cases when they have had to? They sometimes have to compensate a few of the humans involved, but never anything more general than that, and usually nothing approaching the real cost to society or the environment.
I don't know what the answer is here either. The EU is getting much more aggressive about this, but it's already getting to the point that to bring a new product to market strictly within the law essentially costs infinite dollars.
Aviation still uses leaded fuel and we KNOW how bad it is. But the economic consequence of fully eliminating it is still too great. Literally the one chemical that we know with certainty that there is no safe level of exposure to, is still getting distributed through the air all day every day.
It's funny to me the way Prop65 turned out in some ways. When people were told just how bad absolutely everything is, people actually care less. And now the same thing is happening across the EU in a broad range of categories. Everything has at least 3 or 4 warnings on it. Most people just ignore them completely or look for a product with no warnings—which is probably just lying.
We don't even do that very well, for example see all the heavy metals that have been allowed (and are still allowed) in baby food.
Or do some trickery with shell companies, like Johnson&Johnson did, and not have to pay a dime.
That’s not true in the least at least for consumer products like cosmetics or anything ingested or rubbed on the body. Go to FDA.gov and read what it takes to get a consumer product approved.
There is a list of GRAS “generally regarded as safe”. Outside that you can’t use it.
This is an emergency, which would probably require we do a revolution on use commercial packaging and plastic. But I don't have much faith, given how entrenched this industry is. Right now, industry is pushing BPA-free packaging, but I strongly suspect BPA-free plastics have similar endocrine effects, we just haven't studied them long enough.
Based on what? BPA is the monomer which makes up polycarbonate plastic, and it's a simple molecule which has been known to be an estrogen analogue for nearly 100 years. Other kinds of plastics besides polycarbonate are made from much different kinds of monomers which have no structural similarity to BPA, so why should we assume that the risk carries over? The mechanism that makes BPA dangerous has nothing to do with the fact that it can be turned into a plastic.
The group of chemicals known as phthalates are added to a huge range of plastics we use at home every day and there is a ton of evidence suggesting that these chemicals are endocrine disruptors. They seem to all have very similar effects WRT endocrine disruption, often substituted for one another when one is found to be bad. This leads to the whack-a-mole effect described by a sibling comment.
Products can be listed as "BPA free" but still have these endocrine disrupting chemicals in them.
Iron pans, store in glass, butter, lard. If you spill stuff on a couch just live with it. Buy leather. Too many things are made because people are lazy. If you have kids don't have nice stuff, it's very easy.
An unexpected upshot is that in a functional household you can let them play like actual children, without the cloying anxiety and constant shrieks of "For Gods sake Tristan and Tarquin, not on the Louis Vuitton !!"
Trying to avoid this stuff is a bit like Night of the Living Dead -- it's everywhere.
Yes we are down to discussing tea bag brands now but as you are saying, it's an emergency :-(
In bulk tea is not only significantly cheaper (not as bad as the tea capsule mark-up, which is in a league oo its own), but also waste is reduced to nothing (only the tea itself, which is perfectly organic).
Rinsing a reusible tea holder doesn't take more time than it takes to dispose off the paper tied to the end separately.
I want to have my foods and beverages untouched by plastics, but how realistic is this currently?
I want to buy bread that's not wrapped in plastic. Is the alternative really to make your own? Even then, can you ensure the ingredients you're sourcing for your own bread starter for example, also not contained in plastic?
Perhaps it isn't feasible to eliminate all plastics in your life, but it begs the question what is good enough to reverse this and it probably starts with what you're consuming.
I don't know if it's really solved anything, but I switched to loose leaf teas with a stainless steel "tea ball" for individual cups. Now I can instead wonder what metals the global supply chain decided to actually use in that product. ;-)
What are you planning on doing?
I stopped using the Dr Bronner's liquid soap and switched to the their bar soap. For a while I was using the same soap for my hair and then I was doing a "rinse" (apple cider vinegar + some oils) but I got lazy and stopped. I might pick that back up again.
https://info.drbronner.com/all-one-blog/2017/03/definitive-g...
No, this is hope. Converting the entire biomass of earth into homo sapiens is not the goal.
I will never understand how so many educated people have such an anti-humanist view of the world.
Humans are awesome, intelligence is awesome. More humans means more amazing things. We are capable as a species of incredible things, and we have the ability to save our planet as well as continuing to grow. We cannot outgrow this planet and colonize other worlds, we cannot solve climate change, nuclear fusion, quantum computers, the great questions of physics without MORE smart people.
1. Eating and drinking from plastics (This includes aluminum cans which are plastic lined) [a]
2. Heating food in ANY type of plastic [a]
3. Caffein intake [b]
4. Sugar intake [c]
5. NOT exercising regularly [d]
6. Alcohol [e]
7. Age [f]
8. Stress [g]
9. Soy products or other natural products containing phytoestrogens [h]
I edited the comment to add point 8 and 9.
Funnily enough these goes for both genders regarding fertility. If you are considering having a child, it takes approximately 7 months for sperm to fully develop so better to change lifestyle sooner rather than later.
a. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222987 b. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5482951/ c. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35606632/ d. https://rep.bioscientifica.com/view/journals/rep/153/2/157.x... e. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28029592/ f. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3253726/ g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6260894/ h. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18650557/
Soy seems to fall well within the parameters of “this is fine”, but people readily take any example of it effecting our physiology as evidence of it being harmful. In reality, the evidence of it promoting health overall is extensive and strong.
It could be a component of a plant-based diet for example, which is shown to lead to lower BMI (great for sperm and overall health outcomes). It may reduce sperm concentration to a small degree in large volumes, but the chances are good (statistically speaking) that swapping out something worse in your diet for soy would be a net positive.
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> Semen parameters did not seem affected by caffeine intake, at least caffeine from coffee, tea and cocoa drinks, in most studies. Conversely, other contributions suggested a negative effect of cola-containing beverages and caffeine-containing soft drinks on semen volume, count and concentration.
If tea and coffee don't cause an effect, but cola and soft drinks do, doesn't that imply it's sugar, not caffeine?
Anyways, I still think sedentary lifestyles and stress play a larger role than plastics, but those are harder to isolate and control for researchers.
> 2. As regards sperm DNA defects, caffeine intake seemed associated with aneuploidy and DNA breaks, but not with other markers of DNA damage > 3. Finally, male coffee drinking was associated to prolonged time to pregnancy in some, but not all, studies.
And then goes on to conclude:
> The literature suggests that caffeine intake, possibly through sperm DNA damage, may negatively affect male reproductive function.
The whole abstract points at weak/inconclusive results, but we're definitely talking about caffeine here, not sugar.
As far as I'm aware the evidence just isn't there with respect to soy and cherry picking the single study that shows some potential link is just helping fuel a dietary myth, would be my view.
This is particularly important when correcting misimpressions. If your comment is neutral, the neutral reader can absorb the new information fairly easily. But if you're hostile (as with "ah yes, that, definitely that"), then you're also signaling a pre-existing battle. The neutral reader gets confused by these mixed signals and feels caught in crossfire, which is not a state that's good for learning.
The upside of battle language is that it rallies any readers who are already on your side, but this is not a good move in the HN game. We want curious conversation here, not escalating intensity or repetition of already hardened positions. The value of curious conversation can perhaps be measured by how much the participants, including the silent readers, move in the process.
This and seed oils get hit with the exact same playbook, then disregard significant chunks of the world that have zero issues with them.
Does BPA-free plastic improve anything? What about containers of non-prepared food? I can see not eating directly from any, but I think it's pretty hard in the developed world to rid ourselves of plastics entirely in the storage of foodstuffs.
Also, do we know whether the changes in sperm quality you mention affect congenital childhood maladies? (I realize this is probably beyond your field somewhat.)
Silicone tends to not have endocrine disruptors because it doesn't need plasticizers.
[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4492270/
And sperm quality mostly affect fertility. The egg and the body if the woman is incredibly effective at selecting quality sperm and rejecting bad sperm. There are multiple guidance systems for sperm which selects for good quality [b].
a. https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/endocrine/ind... b. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_guidance
Wait until you learn about ink contamination from food nets and cardboard boxes.
So drinking containers should generally be ceramic, glass, or stainless steel?
Even water supplies in a house will typically have been in contact with plastics—at the treatment plant, in the house for any modern house (they're pretty much all PEX now, since it's stupid-easy and fast to install, which means it's very cheap), in the hot water heater if they're any hot water mixed in (ever start with a hot tap for water you're gonna boil?), if you've got a filter system that's almost certainly full of plastic, and so on.
You'd also have to avoid canned goods of all kinds, not just bottled/canned drinks. Store-bought canned foods have plastic liners, which all but completely solved problems with canned-good spoilage that we used to have, but does mean ~all canned goods are sitting in plastic, not metal, effectively. Glass-canned might be better but are usually more expensive and there's still plastic on the inside of the lids (how much that matters, I do not know—I'd expect very little, but sometimes these things are surprising, for all I know those inside-the-lids bits use exceptionally awful plastic or something).
[0] https://www.snowpeak.com/collections/drinkware/products/tita... There are many. This is my favorite.
[1] https://chemistrytalk.org/titanium-anodizing/
Like most things - eliminating the highest points of contact likely would suffice.
Daily habits are the ones that matter.
Are you drinking from a plastic water bottle everyday? Is your water filter plastic? Are you drinking coffee from a keurig or similar? Are you storing food in plastic containers? Are you heating food in plastic containers? Are you using plastic utencils? Are you using plastic lined pans? Are you buying food wrapped in plastic?
Etc etc.
It's a good starting place...then get your sperm tested, it's not prohibitively expensive.
1) https://amzn.to/3H2YadV
I personally use a hard (i.e. not squeezable) plastic bottle, that I fill with cold/cool water just before use. As long as the water has not been sitting in the bottle for days or in the sun or in a hot car, etc. I don't think there is enough potential chemical leeching to worry about.
They don't break.
I do have some glass bottles as well for occasional use by guests, but when on the go, the popular metal water bottles seem best.
> 7. Age [f]
wait wat
Can you explain this more? I was under the impression it took something like 60days for sperm to generate in the body.
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Why is this so rarely discussed?
Can you suggest any reputable sources for keeping up to date with these best practices, from a consumer PoV?
> Because we can identify existing, relatively inexpensive monomers and additives that do not exhibit EA, even when stressed, we believe that plastics having comparable physical properties but that do not release chemicals having detectable EA could be produced at minimal additional cost.
The only question that I have left: Why aren't we doing this already???
There's a very good interview on the topic here: https://youtu.be/V02z9mqTWzg
The great danger that has been created by the availability of cheap refined sugar and similar sweeteners, like HFCS, is that it has become extremely easy to create food that has an unnaturally high concentration of sugar or fructose and that it has become extremely easy to eat an excessive amount of sugar per day.
Most cultivated fruits contain around 10% sugar, while a few are sweeter than that, with up to around 16% sugar, like grapes, fresh figs or fresh dates.
When eating only fresh fruits or defrozen fruits, it is unlikely to eat too much sugar, but it is still possible.
It is recommended that the daily intake of sugar should not exceed around 50 g (i.e. around 25 g fructose).
That corresponds to around 300 g of grapes, or around 500 g of apples or pears or blueberries (or most other fruits), so eating amounts less or equal with these every day should be safe.
On the other hand, a single chocolate might contain over 60 g of sugar. Most industrially-made food, including juices or yogurts or breakfast cereals, contains excessive amounts of sugar, so many people eat daily 100 to 200 g of sugar, or even more, without being aware of this.
When eating dried fruits or honey, it is also possible to eat too much sugar without a lot of effort, e.g. around 80 g of most dried fruits is enough to provide the maximum recommended daily intake of sugar.
Well, I'm trying my best...
How do we avoid this? So no Costco plastic water bottles, ever.
>7. Age
I find this to be the hardest one to avoid!
Eat meat, increase risk of heart disease. Eat soy, decrease fertility.
Life is weird to me. Humans have one of the longest lifespans among mammals, yet we seem to start breaking down not all that far into it. We don't tend to consider 35 "old", as we regularly live 80+ years, and even if you consider the "generally well functioning" span of your life to be your years up to 60 or so, 35 is barely past half way.
Oh well.
Either way, soy vs. meat is not the dichotomy it's sometimes presented as in political narratives. You can eliminate both and still have a huge number of healthy world foods to choose from. The Mediterranean I had recently was delicious and soy and meat free.
[0]: https://www.jwatch.org/jw200808070000002/2008/08/07/do-soy-f...
But at a population level, which of those are actually driving meaningful fertility decline?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S230505001...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...
That's paracetamol for the rest of the world in case you were confused like I was.
So eating and drinking from plastics lowers sperm quality in women too?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC122794/
Kid is beautiful, stubborn, independently-minded, cute, all of it. Would not trade her for the world.
If you're having difficulty conceiving, please consider IVF. We tried for 3 years the natural way with no dice.
This shocked both of us, frankly. We were aware of what the actuarial tables will tell you regarding birth defect rates related to maternal age, but hearing the term geriatric in your mid-thirties is quite shocking. I'm ignorant of any data around paternal age and sperm count (assume it goes down...no idea the rate), but the docs do tend to focus on maternal age quite a bit regarding possible defects and fertility.
Nonetheless we were able to conceive in our late 30s without help or any trouble. Our baby is super healthy. Apparently we lucked out.
There's been some changes to make having kids less of a challenge in recent years - at least in Europe. But it still seems like there's a long way to go, especially in terms of corporate cultures that, in my experience, don't really know what to do with young parents.
Skin elasticity and athleticism decreases with age, and that translates into worse tearing, and more difficult births, longer recovery, and more trouble keeping up with a baby after all that.
Then, on top of all that, your parents are entering their sunset years rather where you have to help them rather than having grandparents young enough to help you with your kids.
It's also linked to things like low birth weight. I sure wish my wife & I had started earlier.
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Back then, IVF Drs. were measured on their success rate so they wanted to put in three blastocysts (fertilized eggs). With fears of triplets in my head, I talked my spouse down to two. My twins are adults now and totally awesome :~)
Drugs for that were simple and very mild (and cheap!) and within 2 months we were pregnant for the first child. For the second child it was just 1 month! This was all naturally conceived after a very long period of nothing happening.
IVF seemed very invasive with potentially low success rates but conversely high risk of twins etc if it did work. I'd recommend getting the immunology investigated if people are suggesting IVF for you - for us it was utterly straight forward and simple once the diagnosis was made and the drugs prescribed. Google for Dr Shehata in the UK.
Source: Have 3 kids
If you can't afford IVF or want to do it another way, there are things you can try to do before you start trying to avoid surprises - the main goal is to try to assess your status so you can align expecatations. It's frustrating to 'get started' and think 'it should take about X months' and then not seeing it happen (huh sounds familiar to product work?).
First, we always think it's the women's fault (or at least society defaults to that nowadays for sure). Men can go to a lab and get your sperm tested and check your testosterone levels. There are actionables to improve this in >6 months (not sure if less).
My wife did all sorts of stuff: checked hormone levels, managed her endo with excercise/diet/stress-management, got her period into one of those tracking apps to the point it actually predicted when ovulation happened (corroborated with home test kits).
In summary, I'm not trying to deal out a recipe here - just making a point that having a lower-stress attempt at getting pregnant can take a while but something can be done if you want to avoid cost of IVF or misalignment of expectations when 'trying' (we started ~preping - wife more so than me - 2 years in advance bc my wife had endo).
No idea if IUI helped or not, but we got a great kid out of it.
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This sounds obvious, but apparently isn’t to a lot of younger people. 38 is considered quite old to start having children (yes it happens, but it’s called a “geriatric pregnancy” for a reason), and I’m sure it contributed to the difficulties conceiving.
A lot of young folks have been convinced that child birth can be put off more or less indefinitely while you pursue a career, but the longer you wait, the more difficult it becomes. Just another piece in the “gee, why are birth rates declining?” puzzle.
Young folks haven't been convinced of shit, it's just literally not an option. Most young people are barely scraping by, can't buy a home, can't rent a medium sized apartment, have terrible health care, unreliable or unpredictable scheduling, etc etc.
"Oh we made do in earlier times" Yes and a lot of the younger generations feel those scars every day, they feel the anxiety from not having enough money in the household, and develop scarcity mindsets that they will fight for the rest of their lives. Of course they don't want to do that to their own kids.
Let alone even being in a relationship at all, one that's stable enough that you genuinely believe you will be together for at least 20 years.
Young adults aren't putting off kids "to pursue a career", we are trying desperately to survive in a world that was picked clean by previous generations and kneecapped before we got a chance at it.
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Tangentially, we spent some time looking at adoption and the total cost going through an agency I think would’ve been about the same.
I sort of understand why, but I still think it’s a bit counterproductive.
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Only past 40 do you go into ‘really need to check’ territory.
https://youtu.be/g9ryP0UyO5U
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You can also cause the ovaries to release more eggs during a menstrual cycle to increase the likelihood of fertilizing one of them. This is IUF.
Most hygiene products get away with listing diethyl phthalate as 'Parfum'.
What we need is not savvy consumers what we need is regulators to get serious.
They did it with sustainability, with sweat shops, with food, with cleaning products. It's ridiculous.
I think it's unfair to characterize Swan's take as trying to 'offload all responsibility to "consumers"'. Presumably the "get rid of these chemicals in our environments" doesn't just intend "our" to only mean some hyper-vigilant subset of the population. One can advocate for removing these from the marketplace while simultaneously having the stance that for now, in the world we actually live in, people can take some steps to limit their exposure. People are always going to ask "but what can I do _now_ to protect myself and my family?" and it's not unreasonable for an expert in the field to try to have an answer.
And that is without even getting into misinformation campaigns.
Endocrine disruptors are airborne and globally ubiquitous in the form of micro-plastics. All drinking water in the world is contaminated with it. [1]
I'm really not meaning to be dramatic on this, but we've completely missed the boat on this one while we were arguing about climate change, and it's much too late to do anything about it now.[2]
I'll not be here to see either way, and it's unlikely anyone else currently alive will unless Ray Kurzweil was right this whole time, but IMHO (I.e. take this with the pinch of salt a random Internet comment warrants) it's likely humanity as a species only has a few hundred years left at most.
This isn't meant to be doom-mongering, it's just that while we worry about some dramatic cataclysmic event like a nuclear war, a pandemic or a meteor strike, the science seems to indicate it's much more likely that humanity will die off with a quiet whimper in a few generations.
It's worth noting that this is not a mainstream view, and that the UN projects a level population out to 2300 [3] - I just don't see that the science backs up this claim, especially given recent understandings of fertility decline.
[https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/wash-documents...]
[https://www.salon.com/2022/01/16/bpa-plastics-harmful/]
[https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.deve...]
The slowdown in population growth has been a topic of world leaders for quite some time. This isn't a topic of interest because world leaders are somehow concerned about the cause (e.g. chemicals in the environment). In fact, the cause is well known and due to fairly straight forward anthropologic factors. As quality of life improves, population growth declines. This happens in nature as well. Populations under stress tend to reproduce more. World leaders are interested in modeling/understanding this as it has macroeconomic effects (e.g. Japan's decade long struggles with stock market decline). This is also why the US and the west in general has went so heavy on quantitative easing for the past decade. They are trying to stave off deflation. Unfortunately, COVID and the associated supply shocks caused that plan to go off the rails a bit...
Finally, I'm not sure what climate change policy has to do with any of this.
I am not sure how much of these plasticizers survives on the microplastic that you refer to. in our water supply or in airborne polyester fibers? Those are major sources of microplastic contamination but I am not sure they are major sources of _plasticizer_ contamination.
In this case there is mounting evidence against phthalates and bisphenols as endocrine disruptors. This is the stuff getting into your blood stream through ingestion or skin absorption mostly from plastic containers, hygiene products, etc.
This is one of the problems, we are missing studies that can demonstrate sources and source contribution to this problem.
You didn't include a link to support the claim that humans only have "a few hundred years left at most". I think this is extremely unlikely to be true. What is your recommended reading?
> A bidirectional relationship between testosterone and obesity underpins this association indicated by the hypogonadal-obesity cycle and evidence weight loss can lead to increased testosterone levels.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25982085/
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It has nothing to do with being savvy.
Lately I've been seeing straws made from a compostable plant based polyester. It's unclear whether they are still using problematic plasticizers in them.
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That's literally the job of regulators, see asbestos or cancer causing pesticides that have been banned or severely restricted. Do you expect all consumers to have degrees in chemistry and read papers to make risk assessments about the 10,000s of chemicals they come into contact daily?
Your comment was heavily upvoted.
Please drop these off-topic distractions from your HN comments, especially bits about upvoting and downvoting, which are such a common source of meta-noise that the site guidelines specifically exclude it: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
These companies shouldn't be able to use these ingredients in the first place, labels or not. It's not our job to read lists of 30+ ingredients and their wikipedia entries to know if we're at risk or not
And when it isn't - both the "not just a river in Egypt" and "blame some handy & culturally appropriate boogeyman" strategies are popular and low-effort. And usually enjoy widespread social support.
People do want that, which is why organic food is rising in popularity, why vegan cosmetics are a thing... the problem is politicians are bribed by big industry influence to not regulate too hard.
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