During his press conference on Tuesday January 16, Emmanuel Macron spoke of a future “Big Plan” against infertility. The causes of difficulty in conceiving a child include contact with chemical substances that are ubiquitous in the home environment, in the food chain, or with certain medications that have been unequivocally proven by hundreds of scientific publications. However, the number and variety of suspected molecules, the variety of routes of exposure (food, inhalation, skin contact, etc.) and the sometimes long delays between exposure and recognition of infertility make it difficult to estimate the extent of these effects and the identification of the main culprits is very complex .

The best proven effects relate to male fertility – worldwide, the average sperm concentration in human semen has halved in half a century, according to the latest analysis of all available data.

Published in June 2022, the first works The researchers who have tried to establish a hierarchy of the main causes of this decline point out that the podium of bisphenols (found in rigid plastics and resins that come into contact with food), polychlorinated dioxins (emitted in particular by household waste incineration plants ) and certain phthalates (contained in flexible plastics). Parabens (found in certain cosmetics and hygiene products) and paracetamol (a common painkiller) were also highlighted by the researchers.

However, be careful: the main effects of the substances appear late, after exposure in utero, by mothers, during pregnancy. These substances that can disrupt the hormonal system (or “endocrine disruptors”) work specifically in building the reproductive system and reducing the future fertility of the unborn child. The time of politics is not the time of biology: regulatory measures taken today to reduce population exposure to these endocrine disruptors would have significant impacts on the fertility of the next generation – although other health impacts will become apparent much sooner can.

Agricultural poisons and endometriosis

A summary of the available scientific literaturepublished in November 2023, for its part, showed that exposure to pesticides from the family of organophosphates and carbamates reduced the concentration of spermatozoa in the semen of people exposed throughout their lives and not just in utero.

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