Men in Danger (2)

Neils Skakkebaek was the Danish researcher featured in a recent SBS documentary called Men in Danger, which I blogged on earlier in the week. Here is a post on some of his work, focusing on specific studies he has done featured in the documentary that aired Sunday night. Neils' work and that of other researchers is around Testicular Dysgenesis Syndrome (TDS) which covers research in the areas of Testicular cancer, poor semen quality and genital defects.

In conducting my search on his work, I discovered that Neils was interviewed by Australia's Radio National back in 1999 on Testicular Cancer, Male Infertility. At that time, they had a less specific data on the decline in sperm count and quality than was presented in the recent SBS documentary after nearly another decade of study. It is impressive how much data they have accumulated and published on over that timeframe. Back in the '90's, he was joint author on a paper published in Environmental Health Perspectives Supplement 7 (Estrogens in the Environment) called Declining Semen Quality and Increasing Incidence of Testicular Cancer: Is there a common cause?

His more recent work can be found by searching Google Scholar for Neils Skakkerbaek, restricting results to 2005 - 2007. These are some of the papers I found that were discussed in the recent SBS documentary:

• From mother to child: Investigation of prenatal and postnatal exposure to persistent bioaccumulating toxicants using breast milk and placenta biomonitoring
• Role of Environmental Factors in the Timing of Puberty
• Flame Retardants in Placenta and Breast Milk and Cryptorchidism in Newborn Boys
• Urinary excretion of phthalates and paraben after repeated whole-body topical application in humans
• Adverse trends in male reproductive health: we may have reached a crucial ‘tipping point’

The good news is that there are safe products available which can protect you and your family from these risks. If you know anyone planning on becoming pregnant, warn them of these issues! We can help you with information on safe products, just contact us at the Health Highway and we will do everything we can to help.