Chances are you know somebody that has struggled with infertility if not yourself.   I can know a handful of friends and family that have visited countless doctors, spent lots of money, been under great stress trying to conceive.

For many women, they spend most of their young adult life trying not to get pregnant only to find that when they are ready, it seems impossible.   Why is infertility becoming more and more prevalent?

According to a new study published July 31, 2013 in the Human Reproduction, BPA may be to blame for 20% of unexplained infertility.

US News Health explains:

In laboratory experiments, they exposed 352 eggs from 121 consenting patients at a fertility clinic to varying levels of BPA.

“Exposure of eggs to BPA decreased the percentage of eggs that matured and increased the percentage of eggs that degenerated,” said lead researcher Catherine Racowsky, director of the assisted reproductive technologies laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

BPA also increased the number of eggs that underwent an abnormal process called “spontaneous activation” that makes eggs act as if they have been fertilized when in fact they haven’t been, Racowsky said.

Moreover, many eggs exposed to BPA that matured did so abnormally, increasing the odds for infertility and birth defects such as Down syndrome, she said….

Racowsky cautioned that these latest results with human eggs were seen in the laboratory, so whether BPA exposure works the same way in real life isn’t known. And the research also found only an association between BPA and infertility and birth defects, not necessarily a cause-and-effect link…

In addition, the eggs used in the experiment were going to be discarded because they didn’t respond normally and thus could be considered damaged to begin with, she said.

Although this study has flaws, we know BPA has also been associated with a host of other health problems. From obesity to asthma, it appears almost every illness has an association with this ubiquitous plastic chemical.

Infertility is an increasing problem in the US.  Rodale News reports:

Here are some staggering infertility stats from the U.S. Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention:

• Number of women ages 15 to 44 with impaired ability to get pregnant or carry a baby to term: 6.7 million

• Number of married women ages 15 to 44 who are infertile: 1.5 million

• Number of women ages 15 to 44 who have used infertility services: 7.4 million

I am not a geneticist, but I can’t help but wonder if our own BPA exposure, or that of our parents, is passed through altered genes that will make infertility a growing problem even if BPA is phased out completely from our world.

This may upset some, as family planning related to the climate often does, but I can’t help but think increased infertility problems is one way to keep the world’s population in check.   We did it. We made the BPA and put in products, but we are all one.  Our actions have symbiotic effects we cannot understand.  It may sound a little out there, but the prevalence of toxins chemicals in our world may just save our world by decreasing population. It may not sound very humanistic, and it is not, plus much suffering is caused by these toxins, yet if we can’t control it ourselves, we may be doing so inadvertently.

I have great compassion for those that want children yet struggle to conceive.

I want to live in a natural, non-toxic world.  I don’t want people to suffer.

Image:  Worried woman looking at a pregnancy test in the bathroom on Bigstock