Slightly OT: Exposure to Aluminium may impact on male fertility

Exposure to Aluminium may impact on male fertility

New research from scientists in the UK and France suggests that human exposure to aluminium may be a significant factor in falling sperm counts and reduced male fertility.

Fluorescence microscopy using an aluminium-specific stain confirmed the presence of aluminium in semen and showed aluminium inside individual sperm.

And the team of scientists, at the universities of Lyon and Saint-Etienne in France and Keele in the UK, found that the higher the aluminium, the lower sperm count.

The research, led by Professor Christopher Exley, a leading authority on human exposure to aluminium at Keele, and Professor Michele Cottier, a specialist in cytology and histology at Saint-Etienne, measured the aluminium content of semen from 62 donors at a French clinic.

Professor Exley said: “There has been a significant decline in male fertility, including sperm count, throughout the developed world over the past several decades and previous research has linked this to environmental factors such as endocrine disruptors.

“Human exposure to aluminium has increased significantly over the same time period and our observation of significant contamination of male semen by aluminium must implicate aluminium as a potential contributor to these changes in reproductive fertility.”

The mean aluminium content for all 62 donors was found to be very high at 339 ppb with the aluminium content of semen from several donors being in excess of 500 ppb. A statistically significant inverse relationship was found between the aluminium content of semen and the sperm count. Higher aluminium resulted in a lower sperm count.

Meh. I doubt exposure to aluminum will effect my fertility near as much as my vasectomy .

I've read lately that estrogen is getting past the waste water treatment and out into the wild. It can literally change the sex of fish, making them produce eggs instead of sperm. Unfortunately, eggs alone don't hatch.

I think we done outsmarted ourselves with birthcontrol.

Phew! Good thing we don't use aluminium here in the U.S.!

It's about time the population control groups got hold of the REAL TRUTH regarding aluminum!
Just in time to save the World.

I hear there are still government restrictions on family size in China. Expect additional aluminum machined parts at discount prices to flood the market, ( dry abrasive machining mostly)

It may be true, But like flouride in the water, Why should I care? It's not a race ;-)

Good thing I hate kids!

This goes against the studies findings on aluminum and its effects on male fertility. I do not have any statics to support this but over exposure to aluminum in the form of a beer can has lead to an awful lot of pregnant women.




Brent

I feel bad for all them people selling all those machines that "only ran aluminum".

Many other mammal species show reduced fertility when population density becomes to high. But it has to be something's fault.

If only stupidity was cause for a low sperm count...

Atomkinder said:

Good thing I hate kids!

Click to expand...

You don't know what you're missing!
Properly cooked, kids are great!!


Rex

Interesting findings, I think with GM foods, hormones, anti-biotics in our waterways, radiation from Japanese reactors yadadada... the whole thing is fucked... it's going to catch up with us, and i'm glad i'll be dead when that happens cause people simply are too greedy to change.

The idiots on the radio were talking about a study that said guys who drink more than 2 cups of coffee a day loose up to 2/3s of their swimmers.
I think the fertility studies are just a reason for the docs to apply for free money.

You probably end up absorbing more Al from antiperspirants that contain it than from working it. Fyi

I don’t care about alumin(i)um. Steel containing lead is worse. In the place I worked last an antirust liquid was used (and probably still is) that contains benzol. A woman director said: Benzine, what’s the problem?

My mom always told me not to scratch the teflon because aluminum is bad for you. At some point in her life she compromised and didn't complain anymore.. probably around the time that I realized (though i don't recall ever mentioning it).. she'd been cooking out of an aluminum pot (a rather large, 6+ quart size) for years...
---
Personally, I believe the metal is a poison, on par with mercury and lead.. we just haven't discovered why yet.
Yeah, I know about all the other chemicals... and they are presently on the level of the "conspiracy" that was offered as an explanation for the hazards of mercury, a generation or two before everyone admitted that taking a bath in it, wasn't a good idea (i'm too lazy to look up the photo of some miner swimming in it, but you get the idea)

Let me remind you all that advanced level college chemistry students manufactured VX in college laboratories for a period of about 6? years... between the 70's and 80's.. those 5-10 years is how long it took for a few folks to notice that.. some of those students died, others suddenly displayed the symptoms of acute nervous symptom break down.. years, in some cases as many as 10 years after the exposure to nervous system altering chemicals. --yeah, yeah, i know a few micro grams will kill a few people.. but for others it takes 10 years to show up.
--btw, i know a man who came down with MS, a year after building his own photo copier (at the age of 17) using a selenium coated drum.. back in the 60's when such equipment was hardly a rumor. he has a few patents to his name, and a project he worked in is a foot note in the book "blindman's bluff" --but point being, i'm fairly confident selenium exposer gave him MS. can i prove it? no, but its in the back of my mind.

God knows what's lurking in the damage to the gnome already...

aspp said:

The idiots on the radio were talking about a study that said guys who drink more than 2 cups of coffee a day loose up to 2/3s of their swimmers.
I think the fertility studies are just a reason for the docs to apply for free money.

Click to expand...

the problem is correlation isn't causation.
fundamental reasons behind why someone might be addicted to <a specific chemical>
maybe more important than the specific chemical.
I drink at least two cases of beer a week.. and a pot of coffee a day would not be too much.. but looking at the past.. i've dealt with far higher stress levels and no chemical fix.. (not to say the current situation is a chemical fix, but it *might* be.). so i judge it to be little impact.

bjorn toulouse said:

You don't know what you're missing!
Properly cooked, kids are great!!


Rex

Click to expand...

I can only manage a whole one with ketchup.

Since you're going to die without heirs, can I have your car?

Hardly a vast surprise is it? Aluminium pretty much had zero interaction with man kind up until the last 100 years or so, it was so reactively locked up chemically in its oxide it was not much of a issue. Equally theres something about our ever increasing life span that’s making us way more susceptable to these issues,especially adding in medical helped survival of the weak. If Darwin s right or just even not totally wrong then helping every one to survive with modern medicine is eventually going to lead to a lot weaker human race genetically and evaluationally.

Life's a terminal condition - live with it!