If there’s one thing that might make you reconsider your environmental impact, this is probably it. Turns out, pollution could be affecting men’s penis sizes, as well as their fertility and libido.
Published in a new book, Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race, environmental and reproductive epidemiologist Dr. Shanna H. Swan claims that there is a huge correlation between smaller penises, lower sperm counts and the use of industrial chemicals in everyday products.
The book basically breaks down how environmental chemicals could lead to low sperm counts, affect fertility rates and penis shrinkage: “Chemicals in our environment and unhealthy lifestyle practices in our modern world are disrupting our hormonal balance, causing various degrees of reproductive havoc,” she writes in the book, which also focuses on plummeting fertility rates. “In some parts of the world, the average twentysomething woman today is less fertile than her grandmother was at 35.”
Having already co-authored a study on falling sperm counts between 1973 and 2011, Dr. Swan adds that the “global existential crisis” of pollution is decreasing sperm counts and directly leads to shrinking penis sizes and the volume of testes.
“The current state of reproductive affairs can’t continue much longer without threatening human survival,” Dr Swan writes. “Of five possible criteria for what makes a species endangered, only one needs to be met; the current state of affairs for humans meets at least three.”
Dr. Swan also explores how pollutants can affect our libido, explaining to The Intercept that she “found a relationship between women’s phthalate levels and their sexual satisfaction… researchers in China found that workers with higher levels of bisphenol A, commonly known as BPA, in their blood were more likely to have sexual problems, including decreased desire.”
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