B ut the story is never simple, when you consider so complex a system. If we threaten to breed to death, pollution appears to offer a restraint on overpopulation. A series of reports in recent years stress the apparent effects of chemical waste on fertility. For instance, it is known that dioxin, a major component of paper mill wastes as well as many other industrial by-products, damages reproductive processes in many species, though its effects on humans remain to be demonstrated. Certain plants naturally produce chemicals with these effects.
F rom our point of view, the most telling story is that of human sperm.
Since the beginning of the year there have been major articles in Esquire , The New Yorker , Mother Jones and The New York Times , all reviewing and assessing research on a sudden and sharp decline in human fertility. Dioxin and other chlorine-based chemicals are not the only culprits, but one of the researchers estimated that half the world's jobs deal with these chemicals. Suspicion points largely at dioxin because it has been shown to behave like the female hormone estrogen, and to cause genetic abnormalities in experimental animals, even in very small doses. The average sperm count found in these studies reflects a three-fold increase in the numbers of men whose sperm count is below an arbitrary rate of 20 million per milliliter since 1950. What may be more disturbing is that many of the sperm that are present are deformed.