Originally published October 17 2005
EU project tests the effects of certain chemicals on sperm
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
ENEA scientists tested the amount of DNA damage in sperm samples gathered from 700 men in Sweden, Poland, Ukraine and Greenland, and found that PCB chemicals damage sperm but show no signs of disrupting fertility rates as of this study.
Toxic man-made industrial chemicals in the environment can damage sperm but do not seem to dramatically effect male fertility, scientists said on Thursday.
They tested the impact of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBS), so called gender bending chemicals which are blamed for causing genetic abnormalities in fish, but found no serious threat to health.
The damage to sperm increased with the level of exposure to the chemicals in European men but did not have the same effect on 193 Inuits men from Greenland in the study.
"We can only speculate, at this stage, that genetic make-up and/or lifestyle factors seem to neutralise or counterbalance the pollutants in this group," Dr Marcello Spano, of the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and the Environment (ENEA) said in the statement.
More than 1.5 billion pounds (680.4 million kilos) of PCBs were made in the United States before production was stopped in 1977, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Spano and his colleagues tested the amount of DNA damage in the sperm of 700 men from Sweden, Poland, Ukraine and Greenland in the European Union project.
The median level of damaged sperm DNA in the men was 10 percent and the large majority of men in that group were fertile.
"PCB exposure might negatively impact reproductive capabilities especially for men who, for other reasons, already have a higher fraction of defective sperm," Spano said.
The scientists, whose findings are reported online by the journal Human Reproduction, said more research is needed into the effects of PCBs, a class of compounds that includes 200 toxic by-products.
They also stressed the need for more information on the impact of exposure of unborn babies which could be more relevant to health and reproductive consequences.
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