In my last column, I talked about attempts by the firecracker
industry to dilute or destroy noise regulations on crackers. The more one thinks about
this, one realises that this is not unusual. In fact, it could be argued that this is only
to be expected. The manufacturers of firecrackers have an interest in pollution and noise.
They are in the business of making a product, which if unregulated for emissions or
toxicity, will be more profitable for them. In other words, they are in the business of
making money through a dirty and polluted environment.
Nothing new in this. Or very dramatic. But it is important, when you consider, the number
of such interest groups that operate, indeed flourish in our country. And, more
importantly, when you consider how weak opposition to them is. These groups have a direct
interest in ensuring that public health related regulations are weakened – from
tobacco industry to the car industry. What we need is equally strong – countervailing
– pressures from the protectors of public health concerns. It is this asymmetry that
leads to the problems we see before us.
Take the issue of pesticides. We have had a close encounter with this equally noxious but
definitely more powerful industry grouping. It is roughly two years to this date, a
medical doctor living in Padre village in Kerala wrote to us about the unusually high
incidences of deformity cases and increasing numbers of cancer deaths in his village. My
colleagues collected samples and our laboratory tested and found exceptionally high
residues of organochlorine pesticide – endosulfan – in human blood, water and
food. |
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URGE
OVERKILL |
| The average man will be infertile within
a century |
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| Endocrine disruptors cause an effect
using more than one mechanism to disrupt normal sperm development and reproduction |
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| Increasing evidence shows plastics,
fumes, pesticides and metals in food and water cause impaired semen quality |
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The
process of human conception is almost absurdly inefficient and depends completely on
chance. During copulation, a man expels tens of millions of sperm, with considerable
force, into his partner’s vaginal canal. Despite
the head start, most of the tiny, tadpole-shaped, self-driven cells never come close to a
woman’s egg. They float deep inside a convoluted fallopian tube and hope that a
chance encounter with the egg — a one in billion chance — would occur. |
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And if
one sperm does finally complete the journey, it may or may not have the energy left for
fertilisation. With these desperate odds, a man clearly needs every last sperm he’s
got to ensure conception. Any fewer than 20 million or so per millilitre (ml) of semen
— 40 million to 120 million in a typical ejaculation — and his chances of siring
a child begin to plummet. This is why clinicians the world-over are so concerned about a
trend they are noticing over the past few years.
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