Man and man's best friend have both been experiencing declines in sperm quality
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
having actually been involved in the operation of a CLIA lab, i can safely say the above is nonsense.
$1000/yr fee would not meaningfully affect the profits of any operating lab. the flat fees aren't $1000, and they're not annual. and the prep time for the inspection of any legitimate lab will cost way more than that.
there's no "medical grade" certification for your instrumentation.
if you're at all accustomed to dealing with bureaucracy and paperwork, being a CLIA lab just isn't very challenging. (which is what makes it so hilarious that Theranos couldn't manage it.)
But it's true, my research for this comment was inadequate.
I have a bodily basic human right to know if my environment is poisoning me.
* Which endocrine disruptors? Many are known, even more are unknown
* Timing of exposure matters more than amount. Tiny doses of substances which are safe for adults will damage you if you are an embryo at the right phase.
* What can you do with this information once you have it?
The CDC tests thousands of people in the U.S. every two years for a panel of chemicals (including endocrine disruptors) via NHANES, so at very least you can compare your results to that to see if you are unusual relative to a nationally representative sample of Americans.
edit: Yes, the referral thing is absurd. People answering the phones at medical offices when I've called trying to give them money will act confused or even offended if you ask how much things cost. Thankfully there are some new businesses like this chipping away at the edges.
I've tried it a couple times and it went fine. Once was for my minor daughter and it was a hassle getting the guardian authorization form into LabCorp's system because lifeextension.com is a bit sucky at anything outside the norm.
Don't know if they cover these particular tests, but probably.
I think it would be possible to bring the price down if you had your own dedicated mass spec and high volume, but it's never going to be cheap. Unfortunately the usefulness of this kind of testing increases the more you can get tested, e.g. before and after a dietary intervention. I think the market for this kind of testing could be large if there was a way to bring the price down, but that probably requires the development of new analytical chemistry techniques.
Even most phthalates are at best mildly associated... I suppose just testing for heavy metals would find most clear cut cases.
There's too much evidence that our obesity problem is caused by excess caloric intake.
One factor is processed foods. They often either have lower satiety/calorie ratios, and refined sugars with no accompanying fiber has actually been shown to decrease satiety and make a person hungrier.
Another factor is sedentary lifestyle. Peoples' appetites tend to be somewhat fixed, and if you used to burn 2100 calories a day on a 2100 calorie diet, but now you burn 2000 calories, that adds up. It doesn't seem like much, but that's 1 pound every 35 days, or 10.42 pounds every year.
Another factor is just evolutionary. In human history, broadly, it makes sense to eat at a surplus whenever possible, because except for very very recently, food surpluses were rare occurrences, and having that extra fat storage on your body could mean the difference between starving and living through a famine.
Am I missing a group of people who eat exactly the kcal they require, get the nutrients they need and don't have a metabolic problem, but still materialise fat for some reason?
Breaking those circles is not easy at all. It's closer to rehabilitation and a long process.
Of course reducing intake is a main goal, but then keeping it low is as important.
Previous HN discussion (with a comment from pg): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=375127
The article mentions PCB 153 "causing a variety of health problems", and being banned as a result. What's the status of DEHP in this context?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bis(2-ethylhexyl)_phthalate#Ef...
https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/substances/toxsubstance.asp?toxid=...
It is only moderately regulated in the United States.
> The analysis found an overall 52.4 percent decline in sperm concentration and a 59.3 percent decline in the total sperm count over the 39-year period.
https://www.npr.org/2017/07/31/539517210/sperm-counts-plumme...
What is apparently going on is intensive farming, so manure:
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/presspacs/2011/...
So the new research that suggests that the swimmers don't swim as they should means there is a double whammy for the humble sperm.
I imagine that if you are breeding dogs, cows, horses or any animal of value this is a serious threat to revenue. We won't necessarily do whatever is needed to fix our own fertility but if there are profits being affected in the world of pedigree pets then something might be done.
I'd also be curious to know, have the effects of BPA been sufficiently studied? Have results been replicated? Do the studies at least sometimes have a funding source not interested in a certain outcome?
hormone disruption during the formative years has lifelong consequence
DEHP can be found in carpets, plastic toys for children, and dog toys. Humans are also exposed by eating microwaved food stored in plastic containers.
Stay away from microwaved food. Keep dogs away from plastic toys.
Stay away from food microwaved in plastic containers?
Note that I still have a plastic top on the container but:
A: You don't have to microwave with that top, you could use some other cover.
B: I am less concerned (possibly incorrectly) with microwaving plastics if they're not in contact with my food.
Can anyone comment on B? Is it safe to microwave plastics if they're not touching food?
Depends how things leach out of the plastics. Is it outgassing?
Contact will cause much more absorption.
For the same reasons, heating soup will absorb a lot more than a salad without dressing.
Glass also won’t absorb some of your foods. Happens a lot with tomato sauces and plastic.
On the positive side, reused plastic is probably safer than fresh plastic, since more of the easily liberated fragments will have already broken free.
leave a plastic lid infused with tomato sauce for at least 4 hours in the mid-day sun and it can get rid of the stain
Food microwaved in borosilicate glass food containers is unlikely to pick up plasticizers.
The challenge increases when you realize that a lot of canned foods have a plastic coating inside, to protect the can metal from corrosion by the canning liquid, particularly when that liquid is acidic, as with tomatoes or carbonated beverages.
I suppose you have to lobby your legislators to pass food safety laws that prohibit polymers and epoxies based on bisphenol-A to be in contact with foods or beverages, specifically, and generally any other substances proven to leach endocrine disruptors into food or beverage under typical handling and storage conditions.
Some food and beverage companies have identified this as a problem and are attempting to fix it in their own supply, but the majority of canned foods still have BPA-epoxy can linings, and most foods with a cardboard outer packaging also have a plastic inner packaging. Then there are the foods directly packaged in plastic containers. PET (1), HDPE (2), LDPE (4), and PP (5) are probably safe over the timespan you will be using them, but PVC (3), PC (7), and PS (6) may leach plasticizers into your consumables that mimic or interfere with the natural signaling chemicals in your body. The recycling symbol is no guarantee. Organic chemistry can produce a lot of different chemicals in very common environmental conditions; that's why life is based on it in the first place. You can still do things to a "safe" plastic to produce unwanted reaction products.
If you buy foods in glass, silicone (polysiloxane), or stainless steel, you're probably okay. Ceramics and stoneware might leach heavy metal ions, but you're probably safe from any unwanted organic molecules.
Brands that find this to be important will probably advertise as "BPA-free". Just don't touch that receipt printed at the point-of-sale terminal. Brands that sell directly to consumers are more likely to go BPA-free than those who supply food-service companies like Sysco or Aramark. So buying from the grocery store is more predictable than eating at a contractor-run eatery.
It's way too much cognitive overhead for a typical person, though. This is a job for a cartel enforcer. So either a privately-run food-safety testing union that controls an independent trademark, licensed to those who pass the tests--like UL is for electrified appliances--or the heavy hand of government.
Regarding "BPA free" products, aren't they using some other synthetic BPA chemicals that have unstudied health risks, simply to be able to claim they are "BPA free"?
Just make sure you don't use Pyrex if you want to use borosilicate glass. Unless it's decades old, Pyrex isn't borosilicate any more, even though they charge prices as if they were. It's a total rip-off. To get borosilicate these days, it seems you have to buy it from China.
Walking along carpet dusts up whatever is in the carpet with every step.
Unfortunately, the non-plastic one I bought two years ago has already died, so maybe there's something to the casing.
Plastic takes a long time to visibly degrade and is pretty smooth using cheap processes.
Anyone have a safer method of brewing coffee? Like boil water in a glass Pyrex beaker and some sort of glass French press/glass aeropress?
The coffee tastes good, they are cheap (assuming you get a cheap one, which works just as well as an expensive one), they last for a long time and you can find them everywhere
So maybe it's just the brand. I did pay about $50 which is a little expensive but not extremely, and it's lasted over 10 years already.
Unless you're not a sperm producer, then you can eat all the plastic you want.
There was a woman a while back to went to extreme measures to avoid plastics. After 1 year of doing everything she could to avoid plastics, they STILL found plasticizers in her blood. Wish I could find the article...
30 percent is a lot for such low levels of the chemicals.
1) Write your politicians about plastic overuse; 2) Vote based on whether they reply and how; 3) Tell your friends how you will vote and why
Without some form of action in support of changing our approach to plastics, you'll continue being exposed to plastics and any potential effects thereof, no matter what steps you try to take to avoid them personally.
Why? If your dog is a pet, it should be neutered. Sperm quality shouldn't be an issue.
Is it possible to run a controlled experiment on dogs, i.e a controlled wild food only diet vs. normal pet dog diet?
"domesticated animals are more likely to: be smaller or larger than their wild counterparts; undergo multiple periods of fertility within the span of one year (a trait referred to as being polyestrous), unlike wild animals, which often mate seasonally" [1]
If you're only mating annually, I'd guess natural for higher sperm count would be more of a factor. If you're a perpetual, opportustic mater, I'd think it be more about selecting for the number of times you could mate.
[1] http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/asked-pets-different-...
Does anyone with more insight on the matter know if there are any nasty compounds I'm exposing myself to using a silicone bag in a sous vide water bath or even microwaving in a silicone bag as opposed up plastic?
Thanks!
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposur...
That said, I can't think of an easier problem for evolution to solve than this. I'm sure we'll get kids immune to plastic in a few more generations.
No, that's just a theory about why violent crime has gone down. No one really knows for sure. Someone noticed that crime rates have gone down, and that this correlates with reduced usage of leaded gasoline in North America.
Remember also that global warming has been going up over the past few centuries, and this has an inverse correlation with the number of pirates on the high seas. Back in the days of Blackbeard, we didn't have problems with global warming. Does this mean that greatly reducing piracy has caused global warming? Of course not. Correlation does not prove causation.
The banning of leaded gasoline might in fact have caused a reduction in violent crime, but it's not proven at this point.
…and the rest of the world… and it always happens after lead regulation… and there's a reasonable mechanism… did you read the article?
> Correlation does not prove causation.
This is a "middle-brow dismissal".
Anyway, here's an RCT on lead reduction in children: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.20160056
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/03/...
Please do not cite this clown.
To be fair, doesn't all cooking alter food's chemistry? In fact, isn't that the whole point of cooking? Look at potatoes for example: humans can't digest raw potato, so we learned to cook it eons ago because that changes it into a form we can digest.
So unless I'm missing something related to terminology, he's right about microwaves altering food chemistry, but it's just scare-mongering because you frequently want to alter food chemistry.
The rest of those things you cite are, of course, total BS.