Future tense: So why are men turning into women

In 2006, director Alfonso Cuarón released the rather prescient film — Children of Men. It takes us to year 2027 where women are infertile. Mankind has stopped procreating and the world’s population has plateaued.

Now, 2027 is just about a decade away. The bad news, however, has started to arrive — and the problem’s not with women going dry.

Fresh research shows testosterone levels of the average male today are 25 per cent less than it was in 1992 (comparing males of the same ages). There’s more. The average male’s estrogen levels have increased an alarming 40 per cent during the same time period. And the tests also show that the male sperm count has gone down a whopping 40 per cent during the same time period.

Which means in a little over a decade, the average male will be “significantly less of a man” and pink will be our favourite crayon.

The study blames chemicals — specifically, xenoestrogens. These are man-made and they mimic effects of natural estrogens in the body. The ‘femalification’ chems are also widely-present around us. They are in the air we breathe, the water we drink, in the farms we feed from and in our rivers. It’s even in the mango you eat because widespread use of genetically-modified foods has been found to worsen the xenoestrogen problem.

“In fact, the effects of traffic pollution in tollgate workers has been demonstrated, with a possible cause from exposure to heavy metals like lead and cadmium increasing oxidant damage to sperm integrity,” says Dr. V. Sasanka, from Hyderabad’s Rainbow Hospital.

But before you garage the car permanently and throw away the mango, there’s your shampoo to worry about too.

Phthalates is a broad category of industrial chemicals found in everything from detergents, automotive plastics, soap, shampoo, fragrances, hair spray, nail polish, plastic bags, processed food packaging, garden hoses, deodorants and even inflatable toys. So, if you’ve just purchased that nice-smelling cologne in the hopes of landing a partner on the bus home, you have only managed to irradiate yourself between the legs.

We now move on to flouride. The promise of flouride is better teeth and no cavities. But according to the study, “While topical fluoride will protect teeth at risk, drinking fluoride is akin to swallowing sunscreen to protect our body from getting a burn.” Ouch!

It continues: “Flouride exposure can lead to many health-related problems including bone and joint pain, immunity disorders, lower fertility rates, hormonal imbalances, and low sperm counts.”

And if the thought of mouthwash killing your sperms is not troubling enough — there’s non-stick pots and pans. Perfluorooctanoic acid or PFOA is “used to keep grease from leaking through fast food wrappers and microwave popcorn bags, in non-stick coatings like Teflon”. If your household uses non-stick pots and pans, that breakfast has managed to kill off possible progeny. You could be the last of your name thanks to toast!

The authors of this study go on to make a rather startling conclusion. They say there’s no other way but avoid these chems in everyday life. That would mean throwing almost everything you have in the medicine cabinet out the window. Because if you don’t, the world could turn into a film starring Clive Owen — and that’s plenty scary enough. May we all live long and prosper. With inputs from Dr V. Sasanka, Rainbow Hospitals, Hyderabad